RAXAUL: The Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), which is the central bank of the country, has stopped all transactions of Indian currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denominations from Wednesday. NRB governor Chiranjivi Nepal too held a talk with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Urjit Patel seeking exchange facility for Nepalese holding banned Indian notes here in Nepal. “Presently we have Rs 33.6 million in the denominations of 500 and 1,000 within the financial system in Nepal.
The figure includes cash parked at vaults of banks, financial institutions and NRB. But actual stock of banned Indian bank notes is expected to be much more because Nepalese were previously allowed to carry Indian 500 and 1,000-rupee bank notes worth up to Rs 25,000. We have requested the Nepal government to initiate government-level talks to sort out the issue at the earliest,” said the NRB governor.
RBI had earlier responded saying the NRB’s message has been conveyed to the Indian finance ministry. Concrete results may not be achieved by holding talks at the central bank level, as the RBI cannot make any move without getting any directive from the finance ministry, the report said. Meanwhile leaders of several trade and business organizations of Nepal said there is hardly any effect of the ban in Nepal as they have enough Indian currency of lower denomination and they mostly depend on Nepali currency for transaction through banks.
