Money exchangers hit hard by note ban

NEW DELHI: Business for cash exchangers—people who accept foreign currency of international tourists, or domestic travellers, and give out the equivalent in Indian currency notes according to the day’s prevailing exchange rate—has been, you guessed it, knocked out cold by notebandi.

This is the peak season for foreign tourists in India and, Sunit Chawla, a 44-year old money exchanger, says he never knew a day in earlier years when he sat twiddling his thumb. This is exactly what he, and other money exchangers all over Delhi, have been doing these past 45 days.

The RBI has made no exception for businesses that handle only cash and, consequently, these traders can only exchange Rs 20,000 or so, every week, much like every other citizen. Earlier, on a good day, this was the amount they exchanged in an hour!

Alex and Alister, from New York City, have been in Delhi for three days now. They went to a

money exchange

company in Connaught Place, but could get only Rs 10,000 the first day. “We got Rs 5,000 each but ran out of cash within two day. We plan to go to Varanasi, but from the car to the hotel to the restaurant—they are accepting payment in cash alone. Cards do not work every place, and we do not have Paytm. Yesterday, we went round the whole market, but only managed to get Rs 2,000 each!” Alex, who is a freelance photographer, said.

“Our business is completely down—we do not know when it will normalize,” Sumit Bansal, director of Ansh International, a money exchange outlet in Connaught Place, said. “With the limit set by the RBI for weekly withdrawal, we have no idea how to run our business,” Bansal says.

“Tourist arrivals seem to have gone down after notebandi. It has been three days, and we have not had a single foreign customer,” Mohammad Shahid Rahman, manager of CDS Money Exchange Bureau, said. He said business was down by over 70% this season and that he did not see any prospects of improvement soon. Money exchange outlets across the Jama Masjid area face a similar situation.

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