The Reserve Bank of India in its post-monetary policy media interaction said that the central bank would remove all the cash withdrawal limits currently in place on savings bank accounts from March 13.
The RBI said that the limits on cash withdrawals from savings bank accounts will be removed in two phases.
In the first phase, weekly cash withdrawal limits on savings banks would be hiked to Rs 50,000 from the current Rs 24,000 from February 20. Recently, while the daily withdrawal limit of cash from the ATMs was hiked to Rs 10,000 from Rs 4,000 earlier, the weekly limit had been kept in place.
In the second phase, there would be no limits on cash withdrawals from savings bank accounts from the RBI from March 13, the central bank said.
The central bank in cognizance with the government had imposed cash withdrawal limits from ATMs and banks, to ensure, they said, equal distribution of cash amongst the public at a time when there was a severe cash crunch going on in the aftermath of demonetization. On November 8, the government moved to delegalise the use of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
On Wednesday, the RBI left key repo rates unchanged at 6.25%, maintaining status quo for a second straight policy outing. This was against the consensus view of experts, the markets and bankers, that the central bank would cut rates by 25bps. After the policy announcement, the BSE Sensex fell 120 points and NSE Nifty fell over 30 points.
