Hyderabad: Banks in the state have failed to exchange even one-third of the currency out of a total Rs 55,000 crore old currency deposits made by people since November 8, leading to a severe currency shortage. The banks could disburse only Rs 15,000 crore till date.
The shortage has been aggravated since December 10 due to successive holidays for banks till December 12. The banks will reopen only on December 13 after second Saturday, Sunday and Milad-un-Nabi.
All banks and ATMs went dry within three hours on Saturday, and even certain malls which were designated to swipe cards for currency ran dry.
While the RBI sent nearly Rs 16,000 crore to the state so far, less than five per cent of this comprised lower denomination notes, intensifying the “change problem”.
The RBI, which supplied only Rs 2,000 notes for the first three weeks after demonetisation, started disbursing lower denomination notes only in the last 10 days after the state government made repeated requests as the shortage of small notes had halted business transactions and affected people fr-om lower income groups and small traders.
Release of Rs 500 note is expected to ease the change shortage.
The Rs 2,000 notes comprised over 95 per cent of the total currency supplied by the RBI. This has only exacerbated the practice of “hoarding” lower demonination notes.
The finance department officials said that the change problem would not be resolved in the near future, if such a huge gap existed between higher and lower denomination rates.
“We are left with no option but to encourage cashless transactions to ensure that the business activities continue as usual, especially in small shops, vegetable and fruit markets,” said finance minister Etela Rajender.
He said bankers had told the government that the state required 15 lakh point-of-sale card-swipe machines for the purpose, which will take a considerable time to supply. The state had 35,000 swipe machines before November 8, which has increased to 51,000.
