Breakaway Slovenes Introduce Own Currency : * Banking: Slovenia offers one-for-one exchange of its new ‘tolar’ for Yugoslav dinar.

As Bostjan Prebevsek bundled millions of Yugoslav dinars for their trip to a monetary graveyard, his Slovenian customers were lining up earlier this week with fistfuls more to plunk down in the biggest gamble of their lives.

Having waited out a three-month moratorium on independence set by the European Community, tiny Slovenia has introduced its own currency to break free of the doomed dinar.

“I think everyone is happy about it,” Prebevsek, manager of Sentilj’s Jugobanka branch, said as he doled out crisp coupons that will serve as local tender until bank notes are printed next year. “This is the end of Serbian control.”

Showing no anxiety over the major monetary change, residents of this light-industrial town on the border with Austria were sauntering in with their wads of dinars. Exuding the trust and determination that has galvanized Slovenia’s secession drive, the locals swapped their lives’ savings as matter of factly as if buying a loaf of bread.

The one-to-one exchange of dinars for the new “tolars” is voluntary. Slovenes are free to keep their Yugoslav currency if they prefer, although shops and services will accept only the Slovenian coupons as of today.

Dinars will be exchangeable after today at a rate dependent on the Yugoslav economy’s health--probably less than the par value used for the initial exchange. Prices stay the same in Slovenia, where clerks spent the week erasing the word dinars from store shelves.

Legislators’ decision to peg the tolar’s international exchange value far below that of the dinar reflected the rampant inflation that Yugoslav authorities are still trying to hide. The dollar late this week fetched 52 tolars, compared to the 22 dinars it buys in Belgrade.

Yugoslavia’s economy has been devastated by the war between Serbia and Croatia. To finance the war, Belgrade has repeatedly printed new dinars, promising a return of the hyper-inflation that reached nearly 3,000% two years ago.

Staying within the Yugoslav monetary system would have been disastrous, most Slovenes agree. But going it alone financially is equally fraught with peril for the 2-million-person republic.