Rs 1000 note costs govt Rs 3.17 to print

MUMBAI: It costs money to make money. Last year, the Reserve Bank of India spent Rs 2,376 crore on printing 16.5 billion currency notes of varied denominations and the tab is only set to rise.

Of all the notes minted, Rs 1,000 costs the least, at Rs 3.17 per note. But the five-rupee note, the smallest in terms of size and denomination, costs the most, 48 paise, compared to the value of the note.

The number of notes printed has risen consistently. "Inflation remained high, often in double digits, in respect of commodities such as foodgrain , pulses, fruits and vegetables , and milk during 2009-10 and 2010-11 - where transactions are expected to be cashintensive ," the RBI said in its annual report for 2010-11 .

"The size of our currency notes has shrunk over time, probably because of the rising cost of paper. Yet, we maintain different dimensions and colours for different denominations ," said Dilip Rajgor, scholar and the author of several books on numismatics.

Paper accounts for fattest slice in note making

Mumbai: Various factors go into how much a currency note costs. RBI officials said that it was the paper that accounted for the fattest slice. Yet, the country's currency architects have not shied away from the idea of designing notes of varied dimensions , unlike many other nations like the US where all the bills are uniformly sized and of the same moss-green colour.

The Indian currency notes have come a long way from the 1800s when the Presidency banks maintained their own colour scheme and minted them for the state they had jurisdictional control over. The government stripped their right to issue notes after passing the Paper Currency Act, 1861. From 1862 when the earliest notes were issued by the government, to 1935, India had one-colour and unifaced notes, or bills that were printed on one side.

The RBI changed all that. It introduced a colour scheme for bills, making it easy for the then largely illiterate population to distinguish between notes. "Even the visually challenged were brought on board before the design of the notes was finalized. The varied size of the notes and the different shapes on the intaglio for each note help them differentiate between the notes," said an RBI officer.

In the history of currency notes, there have been some bloopers too, the most recent being the resemblance between the Rs 100 and Rs 500 notes that forced the RBI to redesign the latter. But that slip also drew out the apex bank's worst fears: Indians did not read the denomination on currency note before handing it to someone, a habit that the RBI inadvertently inculcated in the citizenry.

Source: EconomicTimes