Central bank says specified bank notes yet to be reconciled with the physical cash balances
The RBI has admitted as much in a 15-page response late in April to questions from the Standing Committee on Finance, headed by veteran Congress MP Veerappa Moily.
During a January meeting on the subject of ‘Demonetisation of Indian currency notes of Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 500 and impact thereof’, the panel had asked RBI Governor Urjit Patel to submit written answers to the queries from MPs that he could not answer.
In the note, a copy of which is with BusinessLine, the RBI said that the accounting of the specified bank notes (SBNs) at the currency chests need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors and possible double counting.
“Till this process is completed, any estimate may not indicate the actual numbers of SBNs that have been returned. RBI is taking all steps to complete the process expeditiously so as to release firm figures of SBNs received at an early date,” the note said.
The central bank also said that as of November 8, 2016, there were 17,165 million pieces of Rs. 500 and 6,858 million pieces of Rs. 1,000 notes in circulation, worth Rs. 15,44,035 crore.
One of the panel members asked the Governor about the process to be followed if, say, Rs. 14 lakh crore had been deposited in banks. How will the balance of Rs. 1.4 lakh crore be handled?
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