The Reserve Bank of India on Monday issued fresh guidelines or banks to set up new currency chests. As per the new guidelines, the area of the room or vault should be at least 1500 sq. ft. In case of hilly/ inaccessible places, the area of the strong room or vault should be at least 600 sq. ft. Apart from this, the new chests should have a processing capacity of 6.6 lakh pieces of banknotes per day. For those situated in the hilly/ inaccessible places, capacity of 2.1 lakh pieces of banknotes per day. For the currency chests, the RBI has asked to be open to adopting automation and adaptability to implement IT solutions.

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Earlier, a RBI appointed committee had recommended that the apex bank should encourage banks to open large currency chests with modern facilities and Chest Balance Limit (CBL) of at least Rs 1,000 crore. The central also said that the currency chests should have CBL of ₹1,000 crore, subject to ground realities and reasonable restrictions, at the discretion of the Reserve Bank.

What are currency chests?

The Currency Chest is a locker box of the bank, similar to a cash deposit box. Currency note and coin balance of all the branches of the bank are kept there. Moreover, if the bank has excess cash balance, the excess is moved to the currency chest. In a vice versa situation when the bank is low on cash balance, the currency chest provides with it. 

The Reserve Bank of India has selected certain bank branches to have currency chests to stock rupee notes and coins. The monitoring authority over the chests lies with the RBI.