The Reserve Bank of India said counterfeiting of the newly-designed Rs 500 notes have gone up by 121% and of the Rs 2000 notes by 21.9% in 2018-19 in comparison to the previous year. As many as 12,728 counterfeit notes of the Rs 200 denomination were also detected during the year as against 79 in the previous year. RBI also said there has been an increase of 20.2%, 87.2% and 57.3% in counterfeit notes detected in the denominations of Rs 10, Rs 20 and Rs 50, respectively. However, counterfeit notes detected in the denomination of Rs 100 declined by 7.5%. RBI also said the number of Rs 2000 notes in circulation has seen a sharp drop during the year ended 31 March 2019. There were 3363 million such notes in circulation at the end of March 2018, 3.3% of the total currency in circulation in terms of volume. In value terms, the share of Rs 2000 notes in total currency circulation was 37.3%. However, this number fell to 3291 million pieces in FY19, 3% in volume terms and 31.2% in value terms of the total money in circulation. These notes were introduced after the government demonetized old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in November 2016. However, the value and volume of Rs 500 notes increased substantially from 15,469 million pieces in FY18 to 21,518 million pieces in FY19, which was 19.8% (FY19) of the total circulation in volume terms in comparison with 15.1% (FY18) and 51% (FY19) in value terms as compared to 42.9% (FY18).
