You will get currency notes of the value of Rs 2,000 very soon. The Reserve Bank of India is said to have completed the preparations for introducing this new high-value currency, sources said. The move, experts say, may help the government cut the cost of currency printing and make the mints recover their costs.
The move is considered significant in view of demand from some quarters that notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations be withdrawn to prevent hoarding of black money. Plus, it may discourage circulation of fake notes in the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 categories.
The Rs 2,000 denomination notes have already been printed, and their despatch from the currency printing press in Mysuru is said to have already begun. However, since the demand for this value of the note is very high, it may take about three to four months for these currency notes to become common in the length and breadth of the country.
The highest-value note ever printed by the RBI was of Rs 10,000 note in 1938 and 1954. They were demonetised in 1946 and 1978 respectively.
There has been no official word on the introduction of new notes either from the RBI or the government. The government, on the advice of the RBI , decides on various denominations of banknotes to be issued.
As of March 2016, the value of banknotes in circulation was Rs 16,41,500 lakh crore, an increase of 14.9 percent over the previous year. In value terms, Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes together accounted for 86.4 percent of the total value of notes in circulation.
“During 2015-16, the demand for banknotes and coins remained high notwithstanding the growing shift towards non-cash modes of transactions,” the RBI said in its annual report for 2015-16.
According to reports, it costs a little over Rs 3 to produce a Rs1,000 note, the lowest in terms of printing costs as a proportion of value. Printing notes of smaller denominations is relatively costly.