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The Reserve Bank of India will bring some festive cheer to consumers on ‘Holi’. All restrictions imposed on cash withdrawals for savings bank account holders, including those opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), will be removed from March 13. Customers can freely go to bank branches or ATMs and withdraw money as they did pre-demonetisation.
In the interim, beginning February 20, the limits on cash withdrawals from savings bank accounts will be enhanced to ₹50,000 per week from the current limit of ₹24,000 per week.
The removal of restrictions on PMJDY accounts is significant as there were reports that during the 50-day demonetisation period (November 8, 2016 midnight to December 30, 2016) people with significant cash holdings had used these account holders as mules to deposit money.
The fact that the authorities now have all the details on inflows and outflows relating to these accounts may have lent comfort to the RBI to remove restrictions on them.
The cash withdrawal limits were placed by the RBI as re-monetisation (bringing new notes of ₹2,000 and ₹500 into circulation) was a Herculean task, given that almost 86 per cent of the currency in circulation was sucked out during demonetisation.
RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi said on Wednesday that circulation (notes of all denomination) stood at ₹9.92 lakh crore as on January 27.
Junked note data after June To a question on the number of demonetised notes deposited with the banking system, Deputy Governor SS Mundra said work was on to quantify the amount. “There are 4,000 currency chests in the country. RBI stores currency at 19 locations. Currency moves between the currency chests and the RBI. Cash reconciliation work is still on.”
Besides, Nabard is looking into the issue of money deposited with District Central Co-operative Banks and this number will have to be taken into account. So will Indian currency in Nepal and Bhutan.
Resident Indians who were overseas during the demonetisation period and NRIs have time up to March 31 and June 30, respectively, to deposit demonetised notes into their bank accounts.
The RBI will come out with the deposit numbers after this, said Mundra.
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