The total amount of deposits made in old ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes – withdrawn as legal tender on November 8 – is being reconciled and the final tally will be released soon, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said.
“RBI is taking all steps to complete the process expeditiously so as to release firm figures of SBNs (specified bank notes) received at an early date,” the central bank said on Thursday.
Almost all the withdrawn currency bills had been deposited by the end of the deadline, Bloomberg reported on its website, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Banks had received ₹14.97 lakh crore as of the December 30 deadline for handing in the notes, Bloomberg reported.
The Centre had put the value of withdrawn banknotes at ₹15.4 lakh crore.
Referring to various “estimates”, the RBI said, “any estimate may not indicate the actual numbers.”
The RBI also said its earlier figures “were based on aggregation of accounting entries done at the large number of currency chests all over the country.”
The RBI had reported that as of December 10, withdrawn banknotes amounting to ₹12.44 lakh crore had been returned to the RBI and currency chests. With the deadline now complete, “figures would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors/ possible double counts,” the RBI said.
