Your cash crisis is likely to get over by February end

It is likely that by February end next year, you will not have to stand in queues outside banks and ATMs for cash as there are chances of more than enough currency being pushed into the system.

The demand and supply gap is likely to get trimmed as the cash disbursement to the public could touch Rs 9 lakh crore by January next year.
This can only happen if the government's printing presses work at the current pace.

As per reports, this would be more than 50% of the amount withdrawn from the system.

ET made calculations, which were cross-checked with bankers, and it showed that money disbursement could rise to over Rs 13 lakh crore by the second week of February based on the printing presses' current capacity.

“This would be very close to the amount withdrawn from the system and the cash shortage could effectively be over by the end of February,” bankers told ET.

As per RBI website, it has disbursed notes worth Rs 4.6 lakh crore till December 10.

"There were 1,570 crore notes of one denomination and 530 crore notes of another denomination -a total of 2,100 crore notes. The capacity of printing presses is 300 crore notes per month. If they wanted to replace 2,100 crore notes with the equivalent denomination notes, it would take seven months to print them.That is why they introduced Rs 2,000 notes," Chidambaram had said in a television interview recently.

ET's calculations and conversations with bankers show the replacement could happen much more quickly. But the replacement rate could slow down if RBI prints more Rs 500 notes and fewer Rs 2,000 notes.