The government has informed the Lok Sabha that about ₹ 5,000 crore was spent on printing of new ₹ 500 currency notes post demonetisation.
As per the information provided by Minister of State for Finance P Radhakrishnan in a written reply, as many as 1,695.7 crore pieces of ₹500 denomination notes were printed till December 8.
The amount spent on production of ₹ 500 notes was ₹4,968.84 crore, he said.
The minister also informed that the RBI had printed 365.4 crore pieces of ₹ 2,000 notes at a cost of about ₹ 1,293.6 crore. About ₹ 522.83 crore have been spent on printing of 178 crore pieces of ₹ 200 notes.
The surplus transfered from the RBI to the government has declined by ₹ 35,217 crore in 2016 -17 mainly on account of increase in expenditure on printing of the currency notes.
The government on November 8, 2016 announced to demonetise old ₹ 1,000 and ₹500 notes, which together accounted for about 86 per cent of the currency in circulation. About 99 per cent of the scrapped currency was returned to the RBI.
“Subject to future corrections, based on verification process, the estimated value of Specified Bank Notes (scrapped currency) received as on June 30, 2017 is ₹15.28 lakh crore,” the minister said in reply to another question.
As part of its remonetisation exercise, the Reserve Bank came out new notes of ₹ 500 and ₹ 50. It also introduced notes of ₹2,000 and ₹200.
