NEW DELHI, July 27: The Centre has permitted Reserve Bank of India to print 2 billion pieces of polymer notes initially for field trials, govt informed Parliament on Monday.
Minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary told the Lok Sabha that the one billion pieces each of Rs 10 and Rs 20 notes, which are hard to find, will be printed for field trials and for regular issue after the trials are completed.
He also ruled out any move to replace paper currency with polymer substrate-banknotes and said both will co-exist.
RBI has just floated a tender to source material for the polymer notes, something that has been under discussion for nearly two decades and was cleared along with an expansion of the currency printing infrastructure, which was facing capacity constraints.
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