Coins with new rupee symbol soon: Pranab Mukherjee

A new series of coins will be unveiled soon carrying the Rupee symbol, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in the budget today.

"Indian rupee now has a new symbol, which has been notified for use by the central and state governments, business entities and the general public. A new series of coins carrying this symbol will be issued shortly," Mukherjee said in his budget speech.

He said the government has approached Unicode Standards Authority for inclusion of the symbol in international standards. Unicode is an international standard that allows text data to be interchanged globally without conflict.

In July last year, the Indian rupee got a unique identity mark — a blend of the Devanagri 'Ra' and Roman 'R' — and joined the league of global currencies like the US dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen that have distinct currency symbols.

Among currencies with distinctive identities, only the pound sterling has its symbol printed on the notes.