According to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, around Rs.2 lakh crore has been deposited in banks across the country till 12:15 pm on Saturday, since the currency ban. “The largest banker in the country State Bank of India saw deposits of Rs. 47,868 crore till Saturday afternoon,” told Arun Jaitley to media. He also said that SBI deposit is around 20 percent of the total deposits in all the banks across the country.
“The idea of this demonetisation is to bring money into the banking system, so it can become part of the banking system. Till now, SBI has exchanged currency for 58 lakh individuals. 33 lakh people have withdrawn. Deposits are much higher,” he added.
Arun Jaitley also said that despite allegations by opposition parties that there was spike in bank deposits leading up to demonetisation announcement, except September 2016, no spike has been seen in any month.
“That month the increase was because of money released on account of the Seventh Pay Commission payments,” he added.
Therefore, there is no substance in the allegations that information about demonetisation was leaked.
Jaitley also said that it will take two to three weeks to recalibrate the ATMs across the country, to make them able to release the new currency notes. He also told media that “it will be a slow process.”
“The recalibration could not be done before the announcement, in view of the secrecy that was required till the Cabinet decision was made. If we had started the process of recalibration before, we would have risked a leak of the information, which would have rendered the whole exercise pointless,” said Jaitley.