New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel has said to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance earlier this week that a reasonable stock of new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 currency notes were in place before the announcement of demonetisation was made on November 8, 2016.
"The arrangement for printing of new notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 was started months back taking into the account all critical factors. By the date of the announcement, reasonable amount of newly designed notes had already been printed and kept ready," Patel said in a written submission to the committee.
"Critical factors, such as installed capacity for printing and other resources viz availability/expected the supply of inputs, like bank note paper, ink, logistics requirements etc were factored in and was shared and discussed with the government periodically, in order to lessen the inconvenience for the public," he said.
While keeping the "secrecy in mind", Patel said discussions on the measure had started in early 2016 between the government and the RBI when his predecessor Raghuram Rajan was the Governor.
However, no records of discussions between the central bank and the government on demonetisation were maintained because of secrecy, he added.
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