99.3% of demonetised currency returned to banks: RBI

Around 99.3 per cent of the scrapped ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes, that were banned overnight in November 2016, have been returned, the Reserve Bank of India said in its annual report released on Wednesday.

Of the ₹15.41 lakh crore worth ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes in circulation before November 8, 2016, notes worth ₹15.31 lakh crore have been returned.

The “humungous task of processing and verification of specified bank notes (SBNs) was successfully achieved,” it said.

The SBNs received were verified, counted and processed in the sophisticated high speed currency verification and processing system (CVPS) for accuracy and genuineness and then shredded, it added.

The SBNs refer to the demonetised ₹500 and ₹1,000 rupee.

The RBI said the processing of SBNs has since been completed. “The total SBNs returned from circulation is ₹15,310.73 billion.”

Post-demonetisation, the RBI spent ₹7,965 crore in 2016-17 on printing new ₹500 and ₹2,000 and other denomination notes, more than double the ₹3,421 crore spent in the previous year.

In 2017-18 (July 2017 to June 2018), it spent another ₹4,912 crore on printing of currency, the annual report said.

The demonetisation was hailed as a step that would curb black money, corruption and check counterfeit currency but RBI said, “Counterfeit notes detected in SBNs decreased by 59.7 and 59.6 per cent in the denominations of ₹500 and ₹1,000, respectively.”

“Compared to the previous year, there was an increase of 35 per cent in counterfeit notes detected in the denomination of ₹100, while there was a noticeable increase of 154.3 per cent in counterfeit notes detected in the denomination of ₹50,” RBI said adding that counterfeit notes detected in the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes during 2017-18 were 9,892 and 17,929 as against 199 and 638, respectively, during the previous year.