Ceiling on forex affects tourists, students

When Saseedaran G, a Malaysian insurance agency Manager came to India on November 9, he found himself with 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, which had ceased to be legal tender. “I had changed the currency back home and it was chaos when I landed here. Since many outlets did not accept card transactions, I tried to exchange some money at the forex agencies but none of them had enough cash in the first few days. Luckily, a few of my official contacts helped me by giving me new notes and volunteering to change the notes I had,” said the business traveller. Qin Yichen, a Chinese tourist from Qingdao, said, “We tried the forex agencies but to no avail.” 

Gabriel Peter, a Civil Engineering student from South Sudan, was expecting a transfer of around Rs 10,000 from back home for his expenses. However, the cash crunch at forex left him without enough cash in hand. “The money transfer agencies didn’t have enough cash. I have been depending on my friends to manage my expenses,” he said. 

Mahesh Iyer, COO, Thomas Cook (India) Limited, said the RBI guidelines and limited supply were a challenge. “Based on RBI guidelines, our airport counters were accordingly limiting encashments for foreign nationals to Rs 5,000 per passenger. At our city outlets, in a focussed initiative to assist as many foreign tourists as possible given the limited cash at our disposal, encashments continue to be limited, with exceptions being made for medical emergency cases. For all encashment requests from Indian nationals, our transactions have been facilitated through cheque payments or bank transfer only,” he said. 

V Raja, Managing Director of Maharaja Forex, said over the last two weeks, he had many foreign travellers coming for currency exchange, but had to turn them away. “Some of these travellers didn’t even have enough cash in hand for food. The lack of cash availability is limiting the number of people we can help, but this move is for a good cause and we would like to support the government,” he concluded. 

Public and private sector banks have set up special counters at the airport here to facilitate exchange of banned high value currency notes to help the passengers. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has provided the banks cost-free space and electricity for operating the special counters till December 31. “As part of extending support to airport users following the demonetisation move, AAI has allowed nationalised and scheduled commercial banks to open and operate counters for currency exchanges without any levy for space and electricity at the airport till December 31,” an AAI press release said. Following this, public and private sector banks have set up special counters.