The Reserve Bank of India has decided to increase the limit for daily withdrawals from automated teller machines (ATMs) to Rs 10,000 per card per day, according to a notification on the central bank's website. The limit has been increased from Rs 4500 at present.
Withdrawals from ATMs, however, will be subject to the overall withdrawal limit of Rs 24,000 per week from savings accounts. This limit remains unchanged for now.
Those with current accounts, used often for business purposes, will see some relief.
Clients can now withdraw upto Rs 1 lakh per week from current accounts compared to Rs 50,000 earlier. Both the changes are applicable with immediate effect.
Industry executives say that the availability of cash has improved, allowing for this relaxation.
A lot of the Rs 500 notes that the RBI produced came into circulation in early January, so the situation has definitely improved. I don't think a big change is visible on a daily basis. This can be seen more clearly on a two-week time frame. There are still a large number of ATMs where cash is not available. At this point, around 30 percent of the ATMs are still not getting enough cash, but the others are operating better.Rajiv Kaul, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, CMS Info Systems Limited
The demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes by the central government announced on November 8, pulled out around 86 percent of currency from circulation, resulting in a cash crunch. In order to manage resources and ensure equitable distribution of the available cash, the RBI put restrictions on withdrawals, which have been revised on multiple occasions since then.
While the RBI has not released data on new currency printed in recent weeks, most bankers have said that they expect normalcy to return by March. According to the last available RBI data, the value of notes in circulation remains well below the levels seen before the demonetisation announcement.
The value of notes in circulation stood at Rs 9.14 lakh crore as on December 30, showed the RBI's monthly bulletin for January. This is 52 percent of the Rs 17.54 lakh crore in notes in circulation as on October 28.
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