New Delhi: The Centre on Friday said that there was no proposal to withdraw the Rs 2,000 currency notes that were introduced post note ban.
“There is no proposal to withdraw the Rs 2,000 denomination banknote,” Finance minister Arun Jaitley said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
He informed the house that old currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes returned to currency chests of the RBI amounted to Rs 12.44 lakh crore (as on December 10, 2016).
“The data obtained in this regard would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate counterfeit notes, accounting errors and possible double counts after which only the final figures will be arrived at,” he said.
Mr Jaitley informed that as on March 3, 2017 the currency in circulation was Rs 12 lakh crore and as on January 27, it was Rs 9.921 lakh crore.
Mr Jaitley said demonetisation seeks to create a new “normal” wherein the GDP will be bigger, cleaner and real. “This exercise is part of the government's resolve to eliminate corruption, black money, counterfeit currency and terror funding. This exercise has resulted in an increase in deposits with banks. This will facilitate reduction of interest rates and provide more headroom to banks to expand their credit base,” the minister said.
In a separate statement, Centre said it has not received any “official report” on deaths during the course of currency exchange and withdrawals following demonetisation. “No such official report has been received,” Minister of State for finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
The government also said that the RBI has been authorised to conduct field trials of plastic notes of Rs 10 that have a longer life span. It has been decided to conduct a field trial with plastic banknotes at five locations of the country.
“Approval for procurement of plastic substrate and printing of bank notes of Rs 10 denomination on plastic banknote substrates has been conveyed to the RBI,” the minister said in reply to another question.
