- The Reserve Bank of India has come out with guidelines for banks to set up new currency chests.
- The guidelines issued are (a)New currency chests should include minimum area of 1,500 square feet for strong room/Vault.For those situated in hilly/ inaccessible places,the strong room/ vault area should be at least 600 sq ft (b)The new chests should have a processing capacity of 6.6 lakh pieces of banknotes per day.For those situated in the hilly/ inaccessible places,it should have a capacity of 2.1 lakh pieces of banknotes per day and (c)The currency chests should have Chest Balance Limit (CBL) of ₹1,000 crore, subject to ground realities and reasonable restrictions at the discretion of the Reserve Bank.
- Currency chests are branches of selected banks authorised by the RBI to stock rupee notes and coins.The responsibility for managing the currency in circulation is vested in the RBI.
- The central bank advises the Centre on the number of notes to be printed,the currency denominations,security features and so on.The number of notes that need to be printed is determined using a statistical model that takes the pace of economic growth,the rate of inflation and the replacement rate of soiled notes.However,government has reserved the right to determine the amount of coins that have to be minted.
- The RBI offices in various cities receive the notes from note presses and coins from the mints.These are sent to the currency chests and small coin depots from where they are distributed to bank branches.The RBI has set up over 4,075 currency chests all over the country. Besides these,there are around 3,746 bank branches that act as small coin depots to stock small coins.
