VIJAYAWADA: Even as people continued to reel under the impact of demonetisation, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said that banks in the State had Rs.2,200 crore to dispense as on Saturday.
The Chief Minister said that enough money should be deposited in the ATMs to help people cope with the difficulty caused by the three-day bank holiday.
Currency notes worth Rs.20,000 crore were being printed every day. But since the money in circulation would be less by about Rs.5 lakh crore, people should try to spend mostly through digital channels, he said.
In Andhra Pradesh, Rs.1,450 crore, in the denomination of Rs.500, Rs.100, Rs.50, and Rs.2,000, was despatched to banks in addition to the Rs.750 crore already held by them.
In a teleconference here on Saturday, Mr. Naidu said that cash was being sent to the banks once in every two days, and claimed to have overcome the problem to a large extent.
He instructed the banks to give priority to making payments to women and pensioners, and to cooperate with the post offices in paying wages to the beneficiaries of MGNREGS.
He suggested to the traders to adapt themselves to the QR code system if they were not in a position to afford e-POS machines.
