RBI crack team to monitor payday rush

NEW DELHI: A crack team under Reserve Bank of India deputy governor S S Mundra met on Thursday in the city to chalk out plans to address the problems arising from the expected cash crunch situation during the next two weeks when a large number of salaried people are expected to rush to ATMs to withdraw money .
In addition, a large number of pensioners who prefer to take a major part of their pension in cash at the start of the month, will also come to banks and post offices to withdraw cash.

RBI's ATM task force under Mundra has decided to focus all its attention on the upcoming salary cycle from November 27 to December 7.Usually during the salary cycle -between the 29th of a month and the fifth of the following month -cash withdrawals more than double, sources said. “Suppose the demand for cash around the 15th of the month is X amount. This demand rises by around 60-70% around 27th and 28th of the month and more than 2X between 29th and 5th of the next month,“ an official who attended the meeting.

The task force will use cash withdrawal data from the past months to decide where to channelise currency notes and in what proportion as per the available supply. It will also decide the specific locations in cities and towns around the country where cash requirement rises substantially during the salary cycle. The panel members also discussed ways to manage queues at ATMs, recalibration of these machines and other demonetisation-related issues at Thursday's meeting of the task force, sources said.

The task force has officials from the finance and home ministries, RBI, banks, the National Payments Corp, cash logistics companies, ATM machine manufacturers and companies which manage ATMs.

Since November 9 till date, of about 2.2 lakh ATMs across India, about 1.12 lakh ATMs have already been recalibrated. Every day an additional 10,000 ATMs are also being recalibrated, industry sources said. This is expected to be speeded up in the next few days, some people who attended the meet said.