Demonetisation: Cash crunch unlikely to end before 3-4 months

New Delhi: The key agencies handling the printing and circulation of new currency notes since demonetisation have informed the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that the cash crunch, which the government has been claiming that would get over by mid-January, would not get over till the next three-four months.

According to the sources in the finance ministry, the government departments, after analysing the printing capacity of country's all four printing presses and the demand of currency notes in the market, have found out that the shortage of cash would not get over in the coming days, as claimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The source also confessed, as the cash has been the traditional and most used form of trade across the country, it is going to be really challenging to make all businessmen familiar with the swapping system and digital transactions.

The sources claimed that the intelligence agencies have bluntly informed the Centre that a huge number of people, who were initially supporting demonetisation that scrapped the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, are angry with the government due to the arbitrary of bank managers and mismanagement of ATM machines, where even after standing in queues for long hours they return home empty handed.

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The agricultural sector is also badly hit by the cash crunch as rates of seasonal vegetables and fruits have fallen significantly and the farmers are finding it very expensive to transport their products to the retail market.

The anger among people is consistently increasing over the cash crunch in the banks as well as ATMs because just two and a half weeks are left in completion of 50 days since demonetisation, which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8. He had appealed the people of the country to help the government in its move against black money and corruption and had assured that the situation would be back to normal in next 50 days, the deadline which ends on December 30, 2016.

Ex-finance minister P Chidambaram also launched scathing attack on the Centre on Tuesday, describing demonetisation as the 'biggest scam of the year'.

What Chidambaram said?

• Before imposing the decision, the government at least should have consulted their own man Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister, or former PM Manmohan Singh.
• Has this (demonetisation) stopped corruption, black money?
• The objective is not being served by this. Only poor people are being punished.
• The goal post keeps shifting. It is no longer about black money as now they have found a new one called 'cashless economy'.
• To assume that India will go from 3 per cent to 100 per cent cashless, in a matter of few months, is an outlandish expectation.
• What calculations did the government do to say that one can withdraw Rs 24,000 when banks don't have enough cash to dispense?
• 45 crore people have been affected due to this, who will compensate them?
• Why District Cooperative Central Banks were barred from exchanging scrapped currency notes?
• This move has resulted in farmer suffering as there was no money to buy seeds, hire labour and purchase fertilisers.
• Why the Prime Minister has been absent in the House when a debate on demonetisation was underway.
• He should listen to us. How is it an unreasonable demand?

Well, these reports have raised tension for the government as they weren't expecting such results by the end of the year when they announced the decision.