The Reserve Bank of India will be issuing new Rs 10 notes under Mahatma Gandhi series. The new Rs 10 notes will soon be available in chocolate brown color as the base with a picture of Konark Sun Temple.
As per the source, the government has already printed around 1 billion pieces of the new Rs 10 note. It was only last week that the designed got approved by the government, which has not been changed since 2005. The new Rs 200 and Rs 50 notes were launched in August 2017 under the Mahatma Gandhi series.
The aim of introducing new notes of lower denominations is solely to prevent counterfeiting of notes and promote digital economy.
The government has been trying hard to promote digital money, i.e. payments by debit, credit cards or digital wallet in a bid to eliminate black money or tax evasion out of the equation. On 8 November 2016, the government announced demonetisation to withdraw Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes, amounting to around 86% of the currency in circulation of Rs 17.9 trillion. Since then, RBI has replaced these with the new Rs 2000 notes and redesigned Rs 500 notes.
Until now, government has printed 16.96 billion pieces of Rs 500 notes and 3.6 billion pieces of Rs 2,000 notes on December 8, as per the finance ministry. The total value of such notes translates into Rs 15.79 trillion.
Separately, the regulator had also reissued around 12 billion soiled banknotes of Rs 10, Rs 20 and Rs 50 denomination after the demonetization resulted in a currency crunch. According to RBI, a soiled note is a currency note which has become dirty due to normal wear and tear.
“The idea is to increase supply of lower denomination to encourage day to day transactions and for larger transactions, people should move to digital mode of payment. Printing of lower denomination notes in new design will ensure soiled notes will be taken out from the system,” said Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic adviser at State Bank of India.
The counting of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes has still not being finished.