The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued guidelines for banks to set up new currency chests.
The guidelines include:
- Area of the strong room/ vault of at least 1,500 sq ft. For those situated in hilly/ inaccessible places, the strong room/ vault area of at least 600 sq ft.
- The new chests should have a processing capacity of 6.6 lakh pieces of banknotes per day. Those situated in the hilly/ inaccessible places, a capacity of 2.1 lakh pieces of banknotes per day.
- The currency chests should have Chest Balance Limit (CBL) of Rs 1,000 crore, subject to ground realities and reasonable restrictions, at the discretion of the Reserve Bank.
What is a Currency Chest?
- Currency chest is the place where the currency is stored.
- These chests act as the distributives of RBI cash and enable RBI to take back soiled notes and mutilated notes from the public.
- As per the RBI's annual report of 2017-18, the currency management infrastructure consists of a network of 19 issue offices of the Reserve Bank, 3,975 currency chests and 3,654 small coin depots of commercial, co-operative and regional rural banks spread across the country.
