TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Finance Ministry noted a decline in the amount of counterfeit money circulating in Indonesia. The Ministry's Inspector General, Vincent Sony Loho, said that eight in one million bills of money currently circulating are counterfeits, a decline from last year's 11 fake bills per one million.

Bank Indonesia even noted a lower number. BI's executive director of currency management Antonius Lambok Siahaan said the number of counterfeit notes in circulation as of August was five fake bills per one million real ones.

"Most of the counterfeit money circulates in Java because the island has higher transactions frequency and more populated, so the number of money circulating is great," he said.

Eko Yulianto, BI director for Currency Management, Eko Yulianto, said that throughout 2014, the central bank found 77,596 bills of counterfeit money in circulation, of which 92 percent were 100,000-rupiah bills. The highest number of counterfeit money found was in Jakarta.

BI chief representative for Purwokerto, Rachmat Hernowo, hopes that the combat against counterfeit money will be more effective in the future, especially now that the police and BI have made a memorandum of understanding on the dissemination of currency authenticity.

GANGSAR PARIKESIT | ARIS ANDRIANTO