The weekly limits imposed on cash withdrawals after Centre’s demonetisation drive on November 8, 2016, will be further eased to Rs. 50,000 per week on February 20, the Reserve Bank of India said today, adding that all caps on cash withdrawals will end on March 13.
At present, a savings account holder can withdraw Rs 24,000 per week while Rs Rs 1,00,000 per week can be withdrawn from current accounts.
"The limits on cash withdrawal from savings bank accounts continue to be in place. In line with the pace of remonetisation, it has now been decided to remove these limits in two stages," said RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi.
"Effective February 22, 2017, the limits from cash withdrawal from savings bank accounts will be enhanced to Rs 50,000 per week from the current limit of Rs 24,000 per week (and) effective March 13, 2017, there will be no limits prescribed by RBI on cash withdrawal from savings bank accounts."
He was speaking to the media, along with RBI Governor Urjit Patel, after the central bank announced the sixth bi-monthly monetary policy review.
The RBI had recently raised the ATM withdrawal limit to Rs 10,000 a day but maintained the weekly cap at Rs 24,000 for savings account and Rs 1 lakh for current account holders.
The limits were imposed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to scrap 86 per cent of total currency in Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, around Rs 15.44 lakh crore, on November 8, creating huge cash crunch across the country.
The RBI today said that it has already remonetised Rs 9.92 lakh crore of currency as on January 27.
The central bank also asserted that newly-introduced Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes are difficult to counterfeit and the ones that are being found are only photocopies.
RBI deputy governor SS Mundra also reiterated that India's banking system is robust and saying there are flaws because of a few incidents is wrong.
On the question of how much old notes have been deposited with the banks after demonetisation, the apex bank said it is yet to collect all the data.
It said that all the centres of the RBI are yet to send the data on old notes and NABARD has also not provided with the data on deposits in cooperative banks. The data on notes in circulation in Bhutan and Nepal is also not been collected, the RBI said.
Along with all these data and deposits made by NRIs after December 30, 2016 deadline will it be able to tell how much old notes are back in banks, the RBI said.
