Two members of the three-member Central team on demonetisation assessment on Wednesday expressed satisfaction over the initiatives taken by State Government to ease the problems of people after the Centre scrapped the high-value currency notes of `500 and `1,000.
“We discussed the various strategies to sort out people’s problems due to demonetisation. We also reviewed the State’s initiatives in this regard. The State has taken very good measures to ease the problems. A report will be submitted to the Centre,” said team member Suresh Vasisht after holding a review meeting with top State Government officials and bankers here at the State Secretariat.
The team reviewed money withdrawal situation, status of calibration of ATMs to dispense new `2,000 and `500 notes, demand of mobile banking in unbanked gram panchyats and overall impact of demonetisation on various segments.
State Special Secretary (Finance) Ashok Meena, who was part of the meeting, urged the Central team to ensure that adequate `100 and `500 notes reach rural pockets. He said the situation in urban areas has eased to some extent.
Meanwhile, sources said Central team head and Additional Secretary in the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Ashok Dalwai would visit the State on Thursday.
The sources said the team would meet Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi, Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan, Principal Secretary (Finance) TK Pandey and the RBI Regional Director, the Nabard CGM and SlBC officials.
The Central team visited Odisha as per the decision of the Union Government to depute teams of Additional Secretaries/Joint Secretaries /Directors to various States and Union Territories to assess the ground level situation amidst reports of cash crunch and review the currency availability across the States in the networks of bank branches, ATMs and post offices.