Since the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) announced its decision to withdraw ₹2,000 currency notes from circulation starting May 23, State Bank of India (SBI) has received ₹14,000 crore worth of notes as deposits, reported Business Line.
At the same time, ₹3,000 crore worth of notes have been exchanged.
On the sidelines of SBI’s foreign currency bonds listing ceremony at GIFTIFSC, Dinesh Khara, Chairman, SBI, said, “Around ₹14,000 crore worth of ₹2,000 currency notes have come into the accounts as deposits, while notes worth ₹3,000 crore were exchanged through the branch network. Generally, we are about 20 per cent of the market.”
He also noted that as the withdrawn currency note of ₹2,000 continues to be a legal tender and a “fairly wide window given for exchange”, people are not very anxious.
Commenting on the interest rate cycle outlook, Khara expressed optimism that the RBI will maintain a pause for key rates.
“There was a pause from the RBI and also the inflation numbers. We have to keep a watch on global scenarios and RBI will also look into multiple data points before taking a final call. But as of now, we believe the RBI should continue the pause.”
On bad loans, Khara said SBI has identified a few highvalue accounts to be transferred to the National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL) — created to clean up stressed assets.
“For FY24, we have not set the target as such but identified a few accounts, which would be transferred to NARCL,” he said.
Earlier reports indicated that a phased approach was adopted to resolve bad loans. In the first phase, some 15 accounts aggregating to ₹50,335 crore were identified to be transferred to NARCL during FY22.