Due to the sowing of rabi crop, government’s focus has now shifted to rural areas, which means urban centres are feeling the cash squeeze, said some bankers.
Funds are being made available in rural and semi-urban pockets so that farmers get adequate cash for sowing rabi crop, they said.
There are also reports that banks in major metros are getting less than their cash requirement leading to chaos at the branches.
RBI Governor Urjit Patel had earlier said that the central bank is monitoring the situation on a daily basis and taking all necessary actions to “ease the genuine pain of citizens” with a clear intent to normalise the things as early as possible.
“We have made adequate arrangements to meet the higher demand for cash as salaries would be credited into customer accounts (as the month turns). In our bank there would be no shortage of cash,” Central Bank of India Executive Director R C Lodha said.
Dismissing rumours of rationing of cash, SBI’s Agarwal said there would not be any such thing and customers would be allowed to withdraw as per the limit available.
A customer is allowed to withdraw up to Rs 24,000 per week from their account. However, there were instances of banks not allowing such high withdrawals due to the paucity of cash supply.
Agarwal said she expects queues to be shorter now as banks are not exchanging scrapped old currency notes and also as people who wanted to have deposit demonetised notes would have done by now.
(Sourced from agencies, feature image courtesy:hindustantime.com)
