VIJAYAWADA: There is a 90 per cent dip in the business of foreign money exchange centres in the city as they are also suffering from the heat of demonetisation. The branch heads of various forex centres in the city are urging Government to increase the money exchange limit of Rs 50,000.
As Forex centres come under Non Bank Financial Services (NBFS), the Centre has not given flexible exemptions to them. This has caused the people to suffer as they are unable to send money on time for medical emergencies of their family members living abroad.
“Many of our customers are suffering as we are unable to exchange currency for we are not supposed to exchange more than Rs 50,000 per week. Government should rethink over it. Our customers are suffering as they are unable to send money to their family members abroad,” branch head for UA Exchange, Pranathi Mukkamala, said.
According to Forex head for Uaexhange Ch Sai Bhuvaneswari, around 40 to 50 thousand dollars worth of monetary exchanges take place everyday in the city. In her branch alone, around 7,000 dollars are exchanged every day. The business has dropped by 90 per cent. “We have around 50 walk-ins every day and at least 30 of them are for currency exchange. Now, we don’t have even 10 walk-ins and the money exchange activity is less than Rs 10 lakh,” Sai Bhuvaneswari said.
Branch manager of Centrum V N Veeresh Gupta said that they have stopped accepting currency notes of the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1000. “In view of liquid cash shortage, we are issuing cheques and travel cards to our customers. The customers were not happy,” he said adding that those undergoing medical emergencies are facing a lot of trouble.
Veeresh also noted that majority of the banks approaching their centre for currency exchange are nationalised and private banks and there is a natural demand for US dollars, Euros, Australian dollars and the currencies of Middle East.
As for ATMs, the woes of the public continued on Friday too as ATMs ran out of cash soon after opening. All private banks’ ATMs were closed. “We are loading Rs 2 lakh per day, but the money is withdrawn within an hour. For the remaining day, the ATMs are closed,” said Choudi Lakshmikanth, who mans an ATM of a private bank. Between 2 pm and 6 pm, 95 per cent of the private banks’ ATMs showed up signboards saying óut of cash.
Only the ATMs of the State Bank of India, Andhra Bank and Indian Bank remained open. ATMs of the ICICI Bank, HDFC, IDBI, Axis Bank, Union Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Central Bank, Coastal Bank, Bank of Baroda remained shut. Though some ATMs are issuing notes of Rs 2,000 denomination, customers are facing problems due to the shortage of low denomination notes.
“Getting change for Rs 2,000 note is very difficult. We are facing a lot of problems,” said MV Nagaraja Rao, a teacher in a private school in One Town area.