NEW DELHI: You are more likely to come across a fake
Rs 100 note than fake currency in any other denomination.
Counterfeit notes of Rs 100 denomination continue to dominate the fake Indian currency note (FICN) segment with 45.75 per cent of the fake notes recovered in 2017-18 being of Rs 100 denomination, according to the Reserve Bank of India's (
RBI) annual report for the year 2017-18.
The central bank detected 36.1 per cent of the total 522,783 fake notes last fiscal — a nine-fold increase from 4.3 per cent in 2016-17, the yearly report revealed. This data came to light primarily on the back of processing of notes withdrawn from circulation after
demonetisation.
The remaining fake notes were detected by the regular banks.
The number of counterfeit notes of the redesigned
Rs 500 and the new Rs 2,000 increased nearly 50 times and 28 times, respectively, in the last fiscal compared to the previous financial year. The crisis of fake Rs 2,000 notes is more alarming as their supply was cut by 23 times in 2017-18 vis-a-vis 2016-17.
It is important to note here that the new Rs 2000-notes were only introduced into the system couple of days after demonetisation kicked in on November 8, 2016.
In the annual report that was released on Wednesday, the RBI said that the processing of Rs 500 and 1,000 banknotes was complete, adding that 99.3 per cent of the notes, worth Rs 15.3 lakh crore have been returned to the banks.
