Deposits post demonetisation have crossed Rs 4 lakh cr: Banks

Mumbai: Total deposit mobilisation by banks crossed

Rs 4 lakh crore

on November 14, according to the Indian Banks’ Association. The amount is expected to have since gone up as State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, has seen “demonetisation deposits” grow from Rs 1.04 lakh crore on November 14 to

Rs 1.34 lakh crore

at 4pm on November 18.

According to SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, a large part of the

deposits

would be withdrawn as depositors get back to spending. But 10-15% of the money that citizens have been forced to deposit in banks should stay back, she said.

Speaking to TOI, Bhattacharya said that SBI has done 11 crore transactions since demonetisation and has collected deposits of Rs 1.34 lakh crore. Part of the reason for the higher number of transactions was that a large number of citizens were turning up to exchange notes, with several suspected to be repeat visitors.

According to Bhattacharya, the mechanism for exchange of notes was being misused and even though there have been issues with supply of indelible ink, the talk of using it helped a lot. “I think about 75% of the people were not doing their own stuff. They were being used by others to change money,” said Bhattacharya.

The SBI chief said that there was an initial panic after customers saw ATMs run dry. “The empty ATMs were associated with a cash shortage. They did not realise that there are logistics issues and a need to recalibrate the machines,” said Bhattacharya. She added that ATMs are today playing a pivotal role in banking.

“There is no shortage of Rs 100 notes, but we have to be careful on how to give them out as they are also required in ATMs. We have given out a huge amount of Rs 100 notes, I think people are just not spending them. I have been requesting people that ‘for heaven’s sake, spend. The RBI is constantly printing, so supplies will continue. So please spend. If you don’t spend it, it will not go around’. This is the message we are trying to send,” said Bhattacharya.

“Things are settling down. On an average, we used to do about 75 lakh ATM transactions daily before the demonetisation. In the last 24 hours, we have done 73 lakh transactions. So ATM transactions are sort of coming back up to speed,” she said. Of the 44,000 ATMs of the bank, around 13,000 are already dispensing Rs 2,000 notes. With all the ATMs now being functional, things have stabilised. “We are witnessing normal activity coming back. So employees are again starting to report how many loans they have given and all,” Bhattacharya said.


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