3 Years Since Demonetisation, Circulation Of Counterfeit Rs 500 Notes Up By 121 Per Cent

In November 2016, when the Narendra Modi government announced demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes one of the aims of it was said to be a decisive battle against the fake currencies which were in circulation.?

The newly introduced Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes were said to have features that were impossible to fake. But almost three years after demonetization, the counterfeit menace is back.?

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Counterfeiting of the newly-designed Rs 500 notes shot up by 121 percent and of the Rs 2,000 notes by 21.9 percent in 2018-19 in comparison to the previous year, the RBI said on Thursday.

Of the Rs 200 denomination note, which was introduced in August 2017, as many as 12,728 counterfeit notes were detected as against 79 during the previous year, the RBI said.

Further, the RBI detected an increase of 20.2 percent, 87.2 percent and 57.3 percent in counterfeit notes detected in the denominations of Rs 10, Rs 20 and Rs 50, respectively, but counterfeit notes detected in the denomination of Rs 100 declined by 7.5 percent.

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Out of the total Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICNs) detected in 2018-19 in the banking sector, 5.6 percent were detected at the RBI and 94.4 percent by other banks, the RBI said.

The total expenditure incurred on security printing, the RBI said, from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019 stood at Rs 48.11 billion as against Rs 49.12 billion in the previous year.

The RBI also stated that the? Rs 2,000 note is seeing a sharp drop in print orders. The number of outstanding notes has shrunk by 7.2 crores to 329 crores in FY19.

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According to bankers, the RBI is shifting focus away from the Rs 2,000 note as the denomination was printed in large numbers to cope with the replacement of demonetized notes.

After all demonetized notes were replaced in March 2017, the Rs 2,000 note accounted for half the total value of the currency in circulation. A year later its share declined to 37%. It now accounts for 31% of the value of the total currency in circulation.