No cash in banks

Hyderabad: The hollow claims of the Union government that there was enough cash available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and that there was no need for the people to panic stands exposed as the banks in Telangana state have not been receiving enough cash.

People, who have been bearing with the problems of demonetisation for past 22 days, appear to be fast losing their patience and have started turning their ire against banks.

The banks and ATMs continue to be flooded with large number of customers since morning and good number of them is forced to return empty-handed as within couple of hours of opening, “no cash” signboards appear and the shutters are pulled down.

According to banks in Khammam and Hanamkonda, they have been able to dispense only 5 per cent of the requirement with no significant supplies from the RBI.

After liquidating Rs 100 denomination reserves which they have prior to the demonetisation of high-valued notes, the banks have ran out of the options.

Sources say that Currency Chest Branch of the State Bank of India (Hanamkonda) had so far received only Rs 2,000 denomination notes and the banker is still awaiting new Rs 500 notes.

While the deposits are said to be around Rs 20 crore in last 20 days, the payments that the SBI dispensed was around a meagre 5 per cent.

Forget about meeting the needs of people, the banks are not even in a position to dispense the cash in line with the RBI’s commitment. It may be noted here that RBI has imposed a cap on debit limits.

Sources say that each bank is able to dispense just around Rs 5 lakh a day and not more than that. Majority of the ATMs in the city remained cashless since the Centre had announced demonetisation.

A bank official on condition of anonymity said that majority of the bankers as of now are trying to make do with the Rs 50, Rs 20 and Rs 10 denominations available with them.

“With the customers giving us a dressing down, it’s increasingly becoming hard for us to deal with the situation,” he said.

State Bank of Hyderabad AGM (Khammam) Srinivas Reddy said that their bank has received Rs 140 crore in last 20 days and the amount we could dispense was very little.

A bank manager of a nationalised bank in Nalgonda said that their bank had four branches in the erstwhile Nalgonda district.

Since the Centre announced demonetisation, people had deposited Rs 24.78 crore worth of old notes in Nalgonda branch.

But the cash received from RBI by all four branches to date in the district was only Rs 2.97 crore of new currency. Of this Nalgonda branch got only Rs 75 lakh as its share.

The bank manager said that at this rate it may take another two or three months for hassle-free cash transactions.

The situation was no better in Hyderabad as bankers say that majority of the ATMs are still non-functional since they do not have sufficient cash.

According to manager of scheduled bank in Ameerpet, they had not lifted the shutters of ATM for past 20 days. On Wednesday, they could dispense cash through their ATM only for one hour.

The inflow of cash from RBI is very poor, he added.