Now the citizens of the country have reason to cheer as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced that the weekly limit on withdrawal of cash from savings bank accounts will be increased to Rs50,000, from the current Rs24,000 from February 20, and the limit will be removed from March 13 as the central bank speeds up the pace of remonetisation.
However, it lowered economic growth forecast to 6.9 per cent for the current fiscal from 7.1 per cent estimated earlier.
“The limits on cash withdrawals from savings bank accounts continue to be in place. In line with the pace of remonetisation, it has now been decided to remove these limits in two stages,” said RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi while speaking to the media, along with RBI Governor Urjit Patel, after the central bank announced the sixth bi-monthly monetary policy review.
“Effective February 20, 2017, the limits from cash withdrawal from savings bank accounts will be enhanced to Rs50,000 per week from the current limit of Rs24,000 per week and effective March 13, 2017, there will be no limits prescribed by RBI on cash withdrawal from savings bank accounts,” he said.
Besides, the RBI also surprised Indian stock markets with its hawkish stance, by keeping key interest rates unchanged despite overwhelming expectations of an interest rate cut to at least 25 basis points.
The markets saw a sharp plunge in the Sensex within minutes of the policy announcement, amid heavy pounding of bank stocks. The Nifty index fared better by closing with a marginal 0.75-point gain at 8,769.05, while the Sensex ended the day 45.24 points lower at 28,289.92, after recouping a large part of its intra-day loss of 186 points.
Citing global uncertainty, rising commodity prices and a strong resurgence of demand in FY18, the RBI said it is waiting for more clarity on inflation trend and impact of demonetisation on growth even as it hinted at no interest-rate cut in immediate future by shunning its long-held accommodative monetary policy stance.
It also lowered economic growth forecast to 6.9 per cent for the current fiscal from 7.1 per cent estimated earlier, but said the economy will bounce back to 7.4 per cent next fiscal. “The broad-based Monetary Policy Committee or MPC decided to change the stance from ‘accommodative’ to ‘neutral’ while keeping the policy rate on hold to assess how the transitory effects of demonetisation on inflation and the output gap play out,” Patel said.
As far as remonetisation is concerned, the RBI had earlier removed restrictions on cash withdrawal from current accounts, cash credit accounts and withdrawal through ATMs on February 1. However, the weekly withdrawal limit of Rs24,000 on savings bank accounts is continuing.
On fake new currency notes of Rs500 and Rs2,000 which have come into circulation, Gandhi said the recent ones that have come to notice are photocopies of the currency which can be easily identified by the common man.
“The new notes have enhanced security and design features, and are not easy to copy. The recent one that we have seen is a photocopy, so it is not real counterfeiting. This photocopy is easy for even a common man to identify. It will be possible for them not to be easily duped,” he said.
last week, the Government had informed Parliament that it had not come across any confirmed reports on detection of counterfeit notes of Rs2,000. “Neither the Government nor the RBI has come across any confirmed reports of detection of counterfeit notes of the denomination of Rs2,000 in the banking channel,” Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a written reply to the lok Sabha.