India's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday launched its first kind of Currency Administration Branch (CAB), which will exclusively handle currency notes.
CAB also known as cash factory, is part of the bank's proposal to open one currency chest in every city which will disburse notes and rupee coins to the local banks and ATMs, besides from identifying counterfeit currencies.
SBI (Lucknow circle) chief general manager Shiv Kumar explained, "The cash factory will be the nodal point for issuing currency notes to all local SBI branches as well as ATMs. About half a dozen sophisticated notes sorting machines will sort out currency notes in four varieties in the branch office".
Kumar explained the first range currency notes will be fed into ATMs. The second range, known as re-issuable notes, will be reserved for customer transactions, while the third one, non-issuable, will be sent back to the Reserve Bank of India.
He added the mutilated and bad notes identified by machines will come under the fourth range and will be scrutinized manually.
Kumar informed the next cash factory will be set up in Kanpur.
He added, "The new arrangements are aimed at a more efficient and cost-effective centralized currency administration system instead of having multiple currency chests in a centre as prevalent today".
For the SBI branches, supervising the chests along with routine functions is an additional work. Officials stated by setting up of the cash factory it would be great help in better management of currency notes with fewer infrastructures.
They said that the CAB will also help in boosting the fight against fake currency in Uttar Pradesh, which is becoming a hub for counterfeit currency notes being allegedly smuggled across the absorbent and largely unguarded border with Nepal.
Last year in August, a Reserve Bank of India team had discovered counterfeit currency amounting to over Rs.5 million (Rs.50 lakh) from the currency chest of the State Bank of India's Domariaganj branch in Siddharthnagar district.
Then, the bank's chief cashier was arrested and a large amount of both genuine and fake currency notes were recovered from his house.
No comments:
Post a Comment