New chocolate brown Rs. 10 notes to be out soon
Printing has started for the new Rs. 10 notes in the Mahatma Gandhi series and the currency will be issued shortly, Mint reported. After magenta Rs. 2,000, stone grey Rs. 500, bright yellow Rs. 200 and fluorescent blue Rs. 50, we will now have chocolate brown Rs. 10 notes. The design, with a picture of the Konark Sun Temple, was approved just last week.
Currency in circulation before and after demonetization
The November'16 demonetization caused a loss of 86% of the Rs. 17.9tn in circulation. From then till December 8, 2017, RBI had printed Rs. 2,000 and 500 notes worth Rs. 15.79tn. As of December 22, 2017, currency in circulation was worth Rs. 16.71tn. Volume of banknotes had also increased by 11.1.%, mainly due to infusion of lower denominations.
Since demonetization, several new notes issued
The issue of new notes started with Rs. 2,000 and 500, but it created a cash crunch as people ran out of smaller-value banknotes. In August'17 came new Rs. 200 notes, but availability still remains low as they require widespread recalibration of ATMs. Sources say RBI will print new Rs. 100 notes starting April. One billion new Rs. 10 notes have already been printed.
But printing of new notes has its own challenges
One objective of demonetization was to weed out the alarmingly high number of counterfeit notes: from 1,95,000 pieces in 2008, they had increased to 6,32,000 in 2015-16. However, printing of new notes, especially in smaller denominations, is also not without problems: the RBI cut down the order for new notes to a five-year low because banks don't have enough space to store them.
