RBI may hike weekly cash withdrawal limit to Rs 40,000: Source

The Reserve Bank of India is likely to raise the weekly cash withdrawal limit to Rs 35,000- Rs 40,000 from the current limit of Rs 24,000, sources told Zee Business.

In order to increase the flow of new currency in the country, the central bank may hike the withdrawal limit. A notification to that effect might be issued by the RBI this week, the source said.

The hike in the cash withdrawal limit also comes ahead of the presentation of the annual budget on February 1. The move may help wane criticism from the opposition parties, the source said. 

As per the source,  more than Rs 10 lakh crore new notes have come back in the banking system till now. While the RBI's currency chest had Rs 1 lakh crore. 

Earlier this month, while there were reports that said that 97% of the Rs 14 lakh crore delegalised by demonetization had found its way back into the system. However, the RBI had issued a clarification that they were yet to reconcile all the data to ascertain the figure. 

RBI had said, "We would like to clarify that the periodical Specified Bank Notes (SBN) figures released by us were based on aggregation of accounting entries done at the large no of Currency Chests all over the country. Now that the Scheme has come to an end on December 30, 2016, these figures would need to be reconciled with the physical cash balances to eliminate accounting errors/ possible double counts etc."