New Delhi, May 23 (IANS): India will soon introduce new rupee symbol and extra security features on its bank notes in a bid to tackle the problem of fake currency, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Monday.

"With a view to check this menace of fake currency, an exercise for introduction of security features in all denominations of bank notes is under way," Mukherjee said after releasing procurement manual of Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India here.

Mukherjee said the present bank notes with the new rupee symbol approved by the Unicode Standard Authority for ISO 4217 will be in circulation shortly.

He also said that new coins with the rupee symbol and better designs and shine will be released in July.

Last year, India adopted a unique symbol for its currency, which is a blend of Devanagri 'Ra' and Roman 'R'. The Indian rupee will be only the fifth currency to have a distinct identity, after the US dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen.

Mukherjee said the corporation has taken steps to produce indigenous raw material for the production of bank notes.

"This will lead to production of 80-85 percent of bank note paper in the country in the next three years as against import of about 95 percent paper at present," he said.