RBI working round the clock to count junked currency notes, says governor Urjit Patel

New Delhi The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cut staff holidays to complete counting of currency notes which returned to the system post demonetisation and has also ordered more machines to expedite the process, governor Urjit Patel informed the parliamentary panel on finance on Wednesday.

The central bank governor said employees are working “round the clock” except on Sundays.

Appearing before the panel, chaired by senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, the RBI chief informed the members that the central bank has curtailed holidays for its employees for counting the junked notes.

According to members of the panel that PTI spoke to, the Patel informed the committee that besides Saturdays, many other holidays have also been suspended. RBI has also issued tenders for new machines for counting of the notes, Patel told the committee. There are more than 15,000 staff at RBI.

The panel’s meeting lasted for more than three hours and was attended by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others. During the course of the meeting, when members from opposition parties tried to grill the governor, Moily and BJP member of Parliament Nishikant Dubey intervened.

Moily said the panel will present its report on demonetisation in the monsoon session of Parliament, and that the RBI governor would not be called again on the note ban issue.

The session is scheduled to start on 17 July and conclude on 11 August.

In January too, the RBI governor had appeared before the committee and had told the members that he would submit a statement on the amount of money that had come back into the system after demonetisation.

Meanwhile, Patel also said that RBI is keeping a close watch on transactions involving crypto currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, litecoin and NEM.