It's been nearly 5.5 years since the?demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes took place in November 2016.?But how far have we come since that big move of demonetization? Have the fake notes disappeared from the banking system? Perhaps not, as per the findings from RBI's annual report 2022.?
Compared to the previous financial year 2020-21, there was an increase of 16.4%, 16.5%, 11.7 %, 101.9% and 54.6% in the counterfeit notes detected in the denominations of Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 200, Rs 500 (new design) and Rs 2,000, respectively, RBIĄ¯s annual report?stated.
However, the counterfeit notes detected in the denominations of Rs 50 and Rs 100 have declined by 28.7% and 16.%, respectively.
According to the Reserve Bank of IndiaĄ¯s (RBI)?annual report, during FY2021-22, which ended on March 31, 2022, out of the total fake Indian currency notes detected in the banking sector, 6.9% were detected at the RBI and 93.1% at other banks.
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79,669 fake notes of Rs 500 were detected, which is 101.9% higher in comparison to FY 2020-21Ą¯s figure of 39,453 notes. On the other hand, 13,604 fake notes of Rs 2,000 were detected in FY 2021-22, 54.6% higher than FY 2020-21Ą¯s figure of 8,798 notes.
The number of fake Rs 200 notes in FY 2021-22 was 27,074, which is 11.7% higher than FY 2020-21Ą¯s figure of 24,245.
As far as Rs 10 notes are concerned, fake notes of 354 were detected in Fy 2021-22 vs 304 of FY 2020-21. 311 fake notes of Rs 20 were detected in FY 2021-22 vs 267 in FY 2020-21, as per the RBI report.
In totality, 2,30,971 fake notes were detected in Fy 2021-22, which includes Re.1, Rs 2, Rs 5,? Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 50, Rs 100, Rs 200, Rs 500, Rs 2,000 notes, along with specified bank notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. The figure in FY 2020-21 was 2,08,625 notes. If we further look back on FY 2019-20, the figure of total fake notes detected stood much higher than these, at 2,96,695.
If we look back at FY2016-17 in which demonetization happened,?as many as 762,072 pieces of fake notes were detected in the banking system that year, which was a nearly 20.4% increase over the previous year 2015-16, as per RBI data.
The report also mentioned findings from RBIĄ¯s Banknote Survey of Consumers.
The survey findings revealed that Rs 100 was the most preferred banknote while Rs 2000 was the least preferred denomination. Among coins, the denomination of Rs 5 was the most preferred whereas Re 1 was the least preferred.?
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For this survey, a diverse sample of 11,000 respondents from rural, semiurban, urban and metropolitan areas, spanning 28 states and three union territories participated in the survey.?The survey also included 351 visually impaired respondents (VIR) and covered respondents from the age of 18 to 79 years with a gender representation of 60:40 for males and females.?
The watermark of Mahatma GandhiĄ¯s image followed by the windowed security thread were the most recognised security feature. Around 3% of the respondents were not aware of any banknote security feature. Overall, approximately 7 out of 10 respondents were found to be satisfied with the new series of banknotes. Among the VIR, the majority were found to be aware of the quality of paper and size of the banknotes, as per the RBI report.
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