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Bank Indonesia will soon print new banknotes with additional security features aimed at preventing counterfeiting, one of its directors said on Friday.

“We will upgrade the security of our banknotes by using rainbow printing” said Muhammad Dahlan, the central bank’s director for circulation, according to Antara news agency.

Speaking in Surabaya, Dahlan explained that rainbow printing allowed several colors to be printed using a single plate in specially modified equipment, resulting in a natural blending of the colors.

This would make it more difficult to produce convincing counterfeits, he said, because commercially available printers were unable to match the colors.

Dahlan said rainbow printing had only been used here for the 2010 edition of the Rp 10,000 banknotes.

“Now we will also use rainbow printing for the Rp 20,000, Rp 50,000 and Rp 100,000 bills. This is in line with international standards,” he said.

Dahlan said they would begin printing the new banknotes by October at the latest. He added that Bank Indonesia would print Rp 150 trillion ($17.5 billion) in new banknotes this year.

The head of the central bank’s Surabaya branch, Mohamad Ishak, said counterfeiting usually increased during Ramadan and Idul Fitri.

He also said that counterfeiters were becomin g increasingly skillful and were employing more advanced technology.

Police say the fasting month of Ramadan is often seized upon as the ideal time to print and circulate counterfeit money because people have little time to check security features on notes given the increase in transactions as people buy more food, jewelry, clothes and gifts.

In Denpasar, police arrested a man and a woman on Thursday for attempting to circulate Rp 9.4 million worth of counterfeit money.

Dewa Made Suwela, 26, and Sulastri,45, were arrested at the Ubung bus terminal, said Sr. Comr. Heri Sulistianto, from the Bali Police. They were found in possession of a total of 94 fake Rp 100,000 banknotes.

Sulastri told the police that she had brought the counterfeit bills by bus from Situbondo in East Java, and that Dewa was planning to circulate them in Bali.

Both suspects face charges of counterfeiting, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Separately, the head of the Bank Indonesia branch in Denpasar, Jeffrey Kairupan, said that during the first quarter of the year, a total of 1,107 counterfeit banknotes were discovered in the province. That is a 12.5 percent increase from the same period in 2010.

He said that while there had been an increase in counterfeiting in the first quarter, Bali was not a primary target for the circulation of fake money because most major transactions on the island were done electronically.

“In Bali, transactions are more non-cash, such as with the use of credit or debit cards,” Jeffrey said.

He estimated that counterfeit money on the island amounted to just 0.001 percent of the between Rp 2 trillion and Rp 5 trillion in cash circulating every month in Bali.

“The counterfeiters can usually be classified as amateurs and are not part of well-organized international counterfeiting syndicates,” Jeffrey said.

It is estimated that the stock of counterfeit US dollars in the world is likely on the order of one or fewer per 10,000 genuine notes.