No new Rs 2,000 notes printed in last two years: MoS Anurag Thakur in Lok Sabha

The Finance Ministry on Monday said that Rs 2000 notes have not been printed in the last two years. The ministry was answering a question on why the currency notes introduced after demonetization in 2016 were hardly in circulation now.

In a written reply, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur said 3,362 million currency notes of Rs 2000 denomination were in circulation on March 30, 2018, constituting 3.27 per cent and 37.26 per cent of the currency in terms of volume and trade respectively.

As of February 26, 2021, 2,499 million pieces of Rs 2,000 notes were in circulation, constituting 2.01 percent and 17.78 percent of banknotes in terms of volume and value, respectively.

Thakur said the printing of banknotes of a particular denomination is decided by the government in consultation with RBI to maintain desired denomination mix for facilitating transactional demand of the public. “During the years 2019-20 and 2020-21, no indent has been placed with the presses for printing of Rs 2000 denomination banknotes,” he said.

In 2020, a top official had stated that Rs 2,000 notes accounted for 35 per cent of the total circulation.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had in 2019 stated that 3,542.991 million notes of Rs 2,000 were printed during the financial year 2016-17 (April 2016 to March 2017). No new Rs 2,000 currency notes were printed since April 2019.

The Rs 2,000 notes along with the new Rs 500 currency were introduced in 2016 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation in November 2016 which led to the scrapping of the Rs 1000 notes and old Rs 500 notes.