In its annual report 2017-18, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that the processing of demonetised Rs 500 and 1000 banknotes is complete and it has emerged that nearly 99.3 per cent of the notes worth Rs 15.3 lakh crore have been returned to the banks.
An amount of Rs 107 billion has not yet been received by the RBI after the cash ban, the report said.
After the surprise decision by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1000 bank notes in November 8, 2016, the government had initially estimated about Rs 5 trillion of the Rs 15.4 trillion would not return to the system, indicating that this was cash stashed away illegally to avoid tax.
The value of banknotes in circulation increased by 37.7 per cent over the year to Rs 18,037 billion as at end-March 2018. The volume of banknotes, however, increased by 2.1 per cent. In value terms, the share of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 banknotes, which had together accounted for 72.7 per cent of the total value of banknotes in circulation at end-March 2017, increased to 80.2 per cent as at end-March 2018, RBI told in its report.
