People have exchanged and deposited over Rs5.44 lakh crore worth of scrapped Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes at different banks and cash worth Rs1,03,316 crore has been disbursed over the counter and via ATMs between November 10 and November 18, following the demonetisation of the higher denomination currency.
Consequent to the demonetisation announcement from the midnight of November 8, 2016, the Reserve Bank of India had made arrangements for exchange and deposit of such notes at the counters of the RBI, commercial banks, regional rural banks and urban cooperative banks.
“Banks have since reported that of the total Rs5.44 lakh crore, exchanges amounted to Rs33,006 crore and deposits amounted to Rs5,11,565 crore,” said a statement from the RBI.
Meanwhile, the Government made several exceptions allowing people to use invalid currency notes for buying petrol/diesel, rail and air tickets, payment of public utilities, taxes and Government hospitals.