RBI Governor Bimal Jalan today inaugurated the currency verification and processing system for faster and secured processing of soiled currency notes at the Mumbai office of the central bank.
RBI has so far installed 42 CVPS, costing Rs 147 crore (Rs 1.47 billion), at its various offices to supplement the manual processing of notes in its campaign for weeding out soiled currency notes and replacing them with fresh notes.
Deputy Governor Vepa Kamesam said about 40 billion currency notes are in circulation out of which 10 billion soiled and bad notes would be withdrawn in phases.
"There would be no shortage as RBI would ensure adequate supply of notes in circulation. Till now, 18 billion bad or soiled notes have been destroyed," he added.
The environment-friendly CVPS is capable of processing 50,000-60,000 notes per hour. It counts, examines the genuiness, sorts the notes as fit and unfit and destroys the unfit ones on-line.
The government and the central bank had decided to do away with the practice of stapling notes, Kamesam said, and urged banks and public to help the central bank in its pursuit of clean note policy by not stapling the notes.