The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday said that it has not printed any Rs 2,000 currency notes in the last financial year, 2019-20. The central bank, in its annual report, also said that the number of Rs 2,000 notes in circulation, has gradually come down since 2018. The number of Rs 2,000 currency notes in circulation has come down from 33,632 lakh pieces at end-March 2018 to 32,910 lakh pieces at end-March 2019 and further to 27,398 lakh pieces at end-March 2020, the report said.
Further detailing the breakdown, the report said that Rs 2,000 denomination notes constituted 2.4 per cent of the total volume of notes at end-March 2020, down from 3 per cent at end-March 2019 and 3.3 per cent at end-March 2018. In value terms also, the share has came down to 22.6 per cent at end-March 2020, from 31.2 per at end-March 2019 and 37.3 per cent at the end-March 2018.
On the other hand, the circulation of currency notes of denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 200 has gone up substantially, both in terms of volume and value over the three years beginning 2018.
"In value terms, the share of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 banknotes together accounted for 83.4 per cent of the total value of banknotes in circulation at end-March 2020, with a sharp increase in the share of Rs 500 banknotes," the report also said.
RBI said that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the supply of notes. "The supply of banknotes during 2019-20 was also lower by 23.3 per cent than in the previous year mainly due to the disruptions caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown," the report said.
As for counterfeit notes, the central bank said that a total of 2,96,695 pieces of them were detected during the previous financial year. The number of counterfeit notes of Rs 2,000 detected was 17,020 pieces during the last fiscal, down from 21,847 in 2018-19.
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