The rush for fresh banknotes is on
KATHMANDU, OCT 10 -
Crisp and fragrant bank notes are in high demand during Dashain as people need them to give as presents along with their blessings. And as in past years, banks are hard-pressed to supply them in adequate quantities due to the rush. Concerned that their blessings wouldn’t be as effective without the cash gifts, people have been dashing all over town in search of mint-fresh notes .
Like Jyoti Lamsal from Kohalpur, Banke. He went to the New Road and Thapathali branches of Rastriya Banijya Bank to get new notes , but he had to return empty-handed as the staff said they didn’t have any. So he went to queue up at the Thapathali branch of the central bank. Many people waiting in line at Nepal Rastra Bank’s Thapathali branch had similar complaints. Chhabi Adhikari from Dhading said he needed Rs 9,000 in new notes , and he had been making the rounds of NMB Bank and Siddhartha Development Bank. In the end, he had no option but to go to the central bank.
On Wednesday, there were more than 150 people standing in line under a sweltering sun at the Thapathali office of NRB. Most of them knew that the central bank had distributed new notes to banks and financial institutions (BFIs) specially for the festival.
Furious at being forced to line up before NRB itself, a majority of them questioned where the money was actually available. Laxmi Bista from Lalitpur complained that she could get just Rs 1,000 denomination notes when she asked for smaller denomination notes even from the bank where she has an account.
The people in the queue at NRB each get two packets of fresh notes . The central bank has claimed that it has distributed enough new and clean notes to all the BFIs. However, people have been forced to wait in line before the central bank.
According to NRB, it has distributed new and clean notes worth Rs 30 billion in the market for the Dashain festival.
Meanwhile, bankers said that they had been giving new notes to whoever came for them. Kiran Kumar Shrestha, general manager at Nepal Bank Limited, claimed that his bank had been distributing new notes without any hassles at all their branches.
The central bank said that the shortage was due to the trend of obtaining new notes after the festival starts instead of doing it in advance. NRB spokesperson Bhaskar Mani Gnawali said people should give up the habit of exchanging new notes at the last moment. “We banks alone cannot fulfil the demand of all the customers. We have opened six counters to handle the rush,” he added.
Source: The Kathmandu Post
