No instruction given to banks on withdrawing Rs 2000 notes: Finance Minister Sitharaman
NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that no instructions were given to banks to stop issuing Rs 2000 notes.
"As far as I know, no such instruction has been given to the banks (on stopping issue of Rs 2000 notes)," she said at a meeting with heads of PSU banks.
The Minister's comments come after reports of bank ATMs dispensing more of Rs 500 notes instead of Rs 2,000 notes. Some banks have already started recalibration of their ATMs and other banks will also follow suit, reported PTI, citing sources.
On Saturday, a senior official of Indian Bank said the bank will load more of Rs 200 notes and stop loading Rs 2,000 notes in its ATMs in order to help its customers.
"After withdrawing cash from ATMs, customers come into the bank branches to exchange Rs 2,000 notes for smaller denomination currency notes. In order to avoid that we have decided to stop loading of Rs 2,000 denomination notes in ATMs with immediate effect," the Indian Bank official said.
This move was seen as a gradual phasing out of the high denomination currency as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in an RTI response last year that the central bank has stopped printing Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes.
According to the RTI reply, 3,542.991 million notes of Rs 2,000 denomination were printed during 2016-17. However, 2017-18 saw a substantial reduction in printing and only 111.507 million notes were produced, which further reduced to 46.690 million notes in 2018-19.
However, In December, while replying to a question in the Parliament, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur said there is no proposal to withdraw Rs 2,000 denomination notes.
(With inputs from Agencies)