Exchange and deposit of Rs 2000 notes not available on April 1: RBI

The exchange and deposit of Rs 2,000 notes is not available on Monday, April 1, the Reserve Bank of India announced on March 28.

In an official release, the central bank cited operations associated with the annual closing of accounts behind the unavailability of the exchange and deposit facility.

The facility will however resume on Tuesday, April 2, the RBI said.

 The Rs 2,000 denomination notes, which were introduced during the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in 2015, were rolled back from circulation in May 2023.

Existing notes will continue to be a legal tender, the RBI announced last year, but went on to advise the public to deposit the currency into their bank accounts or exchange them for banknotes of other denomination. 

The notes, which were phased out of printing in 2018-19, were halted for reasons of the RBI’s Clean Note Policy under which gives good-quality currency notes in exchange of soiled notes, which are then withdrawn out of circulation.

Those who still own Rs 2,000 banknotes can also exchange them through post offices, along with 19 other issue offices from any post office across India. 

In a November 1 announcement last year, RBI said the total value of Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation, amounting to Rs 3.56 lakh crore at the close of business on May 19, 2023 when the withdrawal of the denomination was announced, has declined to Rs 0.10 lakh crore as at the close of business on October 31, 2023. 

This amounts to over 97 per cent of the Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation having been returned since.

Though there is no restriction on the amount of deposit, exchange has been limited to Rs 20,000 for the Rs 2000 denomination at a time.