04 December,2009 09:20 AM IST | | Debarti Palit
City is facing an acute shortage of coins, Rs 10 and 20 notes for last couple of months; shopkeepers refuse to sell without exact change
The city is facing an acute shortage of coins, and notes of Rs 5, 10 and 20 denominations for the last three months.
This shortage is resulting in verbal feuds with angry shopkeepers and irritated bus conductors, who find it difficult to return change for high denomination notes.
Shilpi Roy, a homemaker said, "It's a very difficult to go for shopping these days. Be it vegetable market, stationary, grocery shop or auto rickshaws walas, no one is willing to dole out change. Shopkeepers bluntly refuse to give products if we do not have the exact change."
Buying change
Similar is the situation withu00a0 with auto rickshaw drivers and shopkeepers. Vimrao Malve, an rickshaw driver, said, "If the fare is Rs 20 or 30, customers hand over a Rs 100 note. We then have to either fill extra petrol from a petrol pump to get change or buy some items from a shop."
Surya Dalvi, who runs a dairy shop at Aundh, said, "I end up having arguments with most of my customers because of change issues. It's a difficult situation when there are no coins or notes in the market."
On the other hand, banks maintain that the issue of shortage in change has risen as the Reserve bank of India (RBI) is not circulating enough coins and notes in the market. The banks are not even allowed to circulate coin bags to customers.u00a0
RBI policy
An official from Bank of India said, "According to the RBI clean note policy, banks have to give only clean and fresh notes to customers and not soiled ones. When we send say around 100 bundles of soiled notes back to the RBI, we only receive three or four bundles in return. Then the crunch is bound to happen."
He added, "The problem exits a little deeper. The government has to import special paper to print these notes and currently they have a shortage of this paper."
Some also mentioned that as the prices of goods have gone up the demand for coins and small notes have gone down. While some think that the changing attitude of the cosmopolitan crowd is also responsible for the shortage.
Vijay Mandekar, manager, Punjab National Bank, ITI Road, said, "It's become difficult to carry coins for people these days as they have no demand. Also, because of the high prices, one will not find any product under Rs 20. Everything starts at Rs 40 or above."
