The Forint (Ft) became the Hungarian currency in August 1946, after a period of extremely high inflation was brought to an end.

Most Hungarian people seriously think that Hungarian paper money is one of the nicest kind in the world. Opinion makers, on the other hand hate it, find it fitting, though, for a visually backward country. With issuing the 20.000 forint note, Hungary completed a 10-yearbanknote and coin reform in 2001. Possibly the very last in Hungarian money history, before we'll merge into the Euro-system.

The essence of the reform is to issue smaller format banknotes (long overdue), and leave behind our artists and poets who were portrayed on them, and see medieval kings with some false dignity on their faces (sometimes resembling that of heavy drinkers), ones that are more difficult to forfeit (OK.)

All those artistic failures are the direct consequence of a lack of competition. Believe or not, all these "beautiful" images were designed by the resident graphic artist of the Banknote Printers, a state owned operation. The dislike for competition in matters like that was further strengthened after an unsuccessful design contest in the course of the coin reform.

The autocratic President of the National Bank in the early nineties who exercised his right to the final say in the design process and decided to go with the different results of both a competition and an opinion poll; that's why the reverse and the obverse of the coins are so different. The 1 forint coins are said to be too small ( Budapest people call them 'shirt buttons'). The 100 Ft coin proved to be too large, and was later replaced by a two-metal smaller coin. Coins come in denominations of 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1 Ft. Changing Money

January 1997 was a historic date in the modernisation of Hungary : changing forints into foreign currencies was totally liberalised. There came a veritable revolution in changing money for tourists. There are hundreds of services that change your money, and you can get forints from ATM's too. Despite this you will no doubt be solicited to change money in the street at a slightly better rate; there are a large number of con-men walking the streets: some pass on forged notes but most simply work a switch whereby the tourist finds himself with a heap of toilet paper bundled up in genuine notes at either end of the roll.

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