“People can get such notes exchanged at any financial institution till March 14. After that, only NRB offices and specified branches of Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) and Nepal Bank Limited (NBL) will exchange them,” said an NRB official.[break]
The official elaborated that exchanges can be done only in eight NRB offices located in different cities, and 67 branches of Rastriya Banijya Bank (RBB) and Nepal Bank Limited (NB) that operate its note fund on behalf of the central bank.
NRB had launched a drive to withdraw notes bearing kings´ portrait from circulation on government´s request, mainly after the country was declared a republican state. Since then, it has long been appealing to the people to get them exchanged with new bank notes. However, the rate of exchange has been pretty slow. The central bank so far has managed to withdraw just over Rs 18.73 billion worth of such notes from the market.
“Such notes worth well around Rs 28.22 billion are still in circulation,” said the official.
As a part of its clean note policy, NRB plans to replace banknotes with kings´ portrait with those bearing the image of Mt Everest. So far, it has already circulated Rs 111.96 billion worth of banknotes bearing the image of Mt Everest.
However, concerned officials said continued circulation of huge amount of notes with kings´ portrait has been slowing their plan to jump into clean note regime.
The central bank has clarified that its policy to withdraw notes with kings´ portrait does not mean it has demonetized such notes. “Those notes will continue to hold their worth. It´s just that the people will have to get them exchanged with fresh notes from the central bank,” said the source.
However, given the trouble the people will need to take to exchange such notes, officials admit retailers and service providers might refuse to accept such notes, creating nuisance to general consumers. In such a situation, the central bank anticipates it might have to add more counters to arrange easy exchange facility.
“If such a situation emerged, we are planning to allow banks undertaking government transactions like Everest Bank and Nabil to provide such exchange facility,” the source said.
The central bank took the initiative to jump into clean note regime after it adopted clean note policy in the monetary policy for the current fiscal year. The initiative aims to withdraw soiled notes from the market, ensuring that only high quality clean notes are circulated in the market.
Under it, the central bank eventually plans to make stapled and handwritten notes not usable, and replace staples on the note packet by paper or plastic bands.
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