Demonetisation: SBI chief sees normalcy in 10 days

Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the country's largest lender State Bank of India, says the pain of shedding black money will be over soon and that banks and ATMs will function as normal in 10 days.

With incremental deposits of more than Rs300,000 crore collected by banks across the country (including Rs92,000 crore across 24,000 branches of State Bank of India and its associates) by Tuesday, following the government scrapping Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes on 8 November, Bhattacharya also said that interest rates will fall on loans and deposits.

She said a task of this nature needed a lot of secrecy and to that extent, some kind of pain was unavoidable, especially since more than 10 per cent of GDP is in cash.

While the week gone by since the announcement of demonetisation of the Rs1,000 and Rs500 notes was a testing time for bankers and quite distressing for the common man, there is some respite for banks now and ATMs are expected to be functioning more or less normal within 10 days, says Bhattacharya.

In an interview to ET Now, Bhattacharya said banks, including SBI and its associates, have been working overtime for most of the days beginning 9 November, the rush has come down from the first two days when some SBI branches worked late till 10:30-11:00 pm to cope with the crowd.

SBI branches, she said, are currently working towards ensuring that customers' deposits are handled properly and also exchange of notes are streamlined.

While there was a slight fall in the number of people coming to deposit cash, there was a slight increase in the number of people coming to withdraw money, she said, adding that these are better handled now.

The calibration for the Rs500 notes has begun and that for the new Rs2,000 notes will start on Monday, she said. Adding that from today, around 46,000 more ATMs will be operational.

As of now, she said, there was absolutely no need to panic. People can come at their convenience and withdraw money or deposit money. Since old notes can be deposited till 30 December, there is still a lot of time left and people can do it at their convenience, she said.

Though, the ATMs continue to be pain points at this point of time, once the Rs2,000 notes gets calibrated, they will stop running out of money and once the Rs500 are restored, things should get back to normal very quickly.