Over Rs 1 lakh crore worth new Rs 500 notes printed

New Delhi, Feb 17: The Fince Ministry on Friday said that over Rs 1 lakh crore worth of the new Rs 500 notes have already been printed with the presses churning out approximately 22 million pieces of it everyday.

“More than Rs 1 lakh crore worth new Rs 500 notes have been printed. 22 million pieces of Rs 500 being printed per day,” Security Printing Minting Corporation of India Limited (SPMCIL) CMD and Joint Secretary in the department of Economic Affairs Praveen Garg told reporters here.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the 11th Foundation Day function of SPMCIL, which has nine units, including four mints, four presses and one paper mill under it.

An RTI query revealed that the Reserve Bank of India had a stock of only around Rs 4.95 lakh crore in the new Rs 2,000 denomition notes when demonetisation was announced on November 8.

The RBI did not have a single new note of the Rs 500 currency, which were introduced into the system only later.

Garg, however, refused to give the exact date when the printing of Rs 500 notes commenced.

There were 17,165 million pieces of Rs 500 notes and 6,858 million pieces of Rs 1,000 notes in circulation on November 8, 2016, the day Prime Minister rendra Modi announced demonetising the two high denomition notes.

The total amount of high denomition currency circulating in the system on that day was, thus, Rs 15.44 lakh crore (Rs 8.58 lakh crore in Rs 500 notes and Rs 6.86 lakh crore in Rs 1,000).

The Rs 500 notes are being printed by SPMCIL and the two presses of the RBI in the 40-60 ratio while the Rs 2,000 notes are being printed only by the RBI.

“We are printing Rs 500 and other notes, but not Rs 2,000 notes. What is remarkable is that where we used to take three days to print a certain amount of notes, now we are doing it in a few hours,” Garg said.(IANS)