Andhra CM Chandrababu urges Centre to introduce Rs 200 notes

16 November, Hydereabad

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has made an appeal to the Centre to introduce Rs 200 currency notes in order to ease the situation in the wake of the inconvenience the public is facing following the demonetisation of higher value currency notes in the country.

Naidu who favoured the decision to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes to fight corruption in the country stated yesterday that a lot of inconvenience is being faced to fetch change for the newly introduced Rs 2000 notes, with a majority of ATMs remaining shut in several parts of the state.

He said people are unable to withdraw even cash of smaller denominations. He observed that new currency note of Rs 2,000 has no use to the people because of scarcity of change.

Earlier in October, the Chief Minister was the first one who suggested the scrapping of the high currency notes.

He admitted that that a large number of people were facing hardships in the state and country due to unexpected ban and non-availability of notes of smaller denominations to suffice the higher value notes.

He said the country was facing a transition and felt that such problems would arise when reforms were implemented on a massive scale.

Noting that a large number of people were standing in queue for many hours in banks to exchange the currency notes, he felt that the Central government could have taken precautionary measures to avoid problems before demonetisation. Referring to prevention of black money, he felt the problem could be checked with the digitisation of transactions.

He said only 18 per cent of total transactions are digitised in Andhra Pradesh and that the State government is trying to increase the percentage by educating people on the benefit of electronic transactions.

He exuded confidence that the country can overcome the present crisis and felt that the reforms would strengthen the economy in the long-run.