The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued close to 60 notifications since the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8 announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Many of them were updates and clarifications, while at least one of them - on deposit of banned notes - was a clear U-turn.
However, the RBI has been rather miserly in putting out updates on data that would be of interest to many analysts and citizens: ATMs, PoS machines, credit and debit cards and their usage.
The last set of information was released of August 2016, almost two-and-half-months before demonetisation. India had 2,02,801 ATMs and 14,61,972 PoS machines (terminals) at the end of the month, while there were 2.63 crore credit cards and 71.24 debit cards, according to the central bank's monthly update titled "BANKWISE ATM/POS/CARD STATISTICS" at the end of August 2016.
The growth is insignificant from 2,01,861 ATMs and 14,43,899 PoS terminals as of July 2016, indicating the pace of expansion is not sufficient to drive both ease of withdrawing money or digital economy, both key to resolving the twin issues of long queues at ATMs or encouraging more cashless transactions.
Based on the position as of March 31, 2016, the growth as of August 2016 in the number of ATMs was a modest 1.85 percent (from 1,99,099 ATMs) and 5.50 percent for PoS (from 13,85,668). Credit and debit cards saw an increase of about 7.6 percent (2.45 crore credit cards and 66.18 crore debit cards).
Of course, the RBI has been rather prompt in updating on the number of notes demonetised and the parallel remonetisation exercise undertaken since the note ban decision.
In other news, RBI governor Urjit Patel will appear before a Parliamentary panel on finance either on January 18 or 19 on the demonetisation issue.
