PUNE: Sumedh (60) of Salunke Vihar Road had a tough time locating an ATM kiosk with cash on Tuesday afternoon. He made rounds to five ATM kiosks — two of public sector banks and three of private players — but to no avail. He hired an autorickshaw, travelled for about 1.5km and got cash from a facility on NIBM Road.“Today’s experience is nothing less than a stark reminder of the post-demonetisation phase,” he said, adding that he had been reading about the cash crunch, but never thought it would escalate so quickly.The situation with regard to cash was not as grim in Pune as in some other parts of the country. Yet, people in some pockets, like Wanowrie and Salunke Vihar, had to run from one ATM to another to get cash. “This situation occurred as currency chests of some banks experienced cash crunch,” a currency chest manager of a public sector bank told TOI.He said at a recent state-level bankers’ committee meeting held in the city, bankers had apprised the RBI representative of the looming cash crunch. “We had told him that there were a lot of low denomination notes that cannot be fed into the ATM machine. So far, there is no response from the central bank,” the currency manager added.The cash shortage occurred in some parts, while areas like FC Road, Model Colony and JM Road remained unaffected. “The shortage in certain parts was due to hoarding by certain quarters,” a banker said.“There is so much cash in the system. There cannot be any shortage. Cannot think of another reason than hoarding,” said the branch manager of a public sector bank. He added that RBI should encourage people to get money from branches for a few days to ensure circulation of low denomination notes.RBI data showed that the currency in circulation as on April 6, 2018 was Rs 18.2 lakh crore — 36% more than in the yearago period.The experience of shortage was not uniform across banks or their branches either. While some bankers said there was a shortage of Rs 500 denomination notes, others complained of the shortage in the Rs 2,000 category. Branch managers, however, reported no “post- demonetisation-like crunch”.A possible explanation for this is that currency in circulation at branch-level is a function of what branches get from the currency chest and what they get as deposits from customers. So, a large branch of SBI did not show any shortage or possibility of it in the next 2-3 days.A currency chest manager of another large public sector bank said it might be difficult to pull on beyond the next two days, if the situation did not improve.Pune-based Bank of Maharashtra also reported a comfortable cash position. A spokesperson of the bank said it might be able to keep over 90% of their ATMs functional for the next 8-10 days even if they did not receive any inflow from the RBI.

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