By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday said new security features have been embedded in currency notes to check the flow of fake Indian currency notes in the country.
”It was practically impossible for a layman to differentiate between genuine and fake currency notes and the RBI has adopted new security features on bank notes to deal with the menace of fake Indian currency notes,” RBI general manager (department of expenditure & budgetary control) P Shyam Sundar told reporters.
Sundar said “The quality of fake notes are so good, that the similarity between counterfeit and genuine currency is in the range of 90 to 95 per cent.”
He, however, refused to name the places from where the fake notes have been pumped into the country, saying that the RBI has been integrating new security features in currency notes in a bid to check the “menace”.
“Apart from regularly changing the design of the notes, we have also incorporated new security features in the notes. These measures would certainly help in curbing the menace,” Sundar said.
He also said the RBI was working on augmenting the functioning of the security press apart from developing security paper for printing currency notes.
The official informed that an office of the RBI would be soon established in Shillong. “We are likely to open the branch office by this April,” he said.
“Once the office is established, the RBI would be in a better position to directly work with other banks and also to take active part in developing the state,” Sundar said while stressing on the need to bring in more people under the banking network.
Currently, there are only two offices of the RBI in the region, Guwahati and Agartala.
When asked about the shortage of coins in the State, Sunder said he was aware about this problem.
“In fact, there is no shortage of coins. We would soon take corrective measures to see that the coins are being circulated in an even manner in various parts of the country,” he said.