Petrol pump across the country are facing big challenge — change for ₹2,000 notes. Dealers say this issue is mainly emanating from users of two-wheelers.

On May 19, the Reserve Bank of India announced withdrawal of ₹2,000 denomination banknotes from circulation. Now, 10 notes can be exchanged at a time from a bank branch, while there is no cap on deposits.

A petrol pump dealer in Delhi told businessline that it was business as usual on Friday and Saturday. “On Monday, we had many customers on two-wheelers coming with ₹2,000 notes for fill fuel of ₹100 or ₹200. If returning ₹1,800 or ₹1,900 was an issue, then another issue was spending more time than usual on one customer. It was a challenging situation, especially when temperature is more than 42-43 degree Celsius,” he said.

Ajay Bansal, President of All India Petroleum Dealers Association, said petrol outlets are extremely short of change across the country. “We request the RBI to give guidelines to banks for providing enough small denomination notes, especially to petrol pumps in lieu of ₹2,000 notes so that we can smoothly,” he said.

According to dealers, it is estimated that on an average the share of ₹2,000 in total cash sale has jumped to 90 per cent, against 10 per cent till last week. Also, the share of digital payments in total sale has come down to 10 per cent, against 40 per cent till last week.

According to reports, petrol pumps in Kolkata claim to have witnessed a 10-fold increase in payments using ₹2,000 notes. A similar trend was also observed in cities such as Aurangabad and Patna.

“We are afraid that we would again face problems due to current scenario as was forced after demonetisation as most of dealers received income tax notices/raids without any faults of them as they received more payments during the period due to increased sale and outstanding payment from credit card customers,” he said.

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