The small lived life of ₹2000 banknotes: how did it meet the fate of discontinuation

The ₹2000 banknotes will no longer be in circulation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on Friday, May 19. The ₹2000 banknotes, however, would still be accepted as legal money.

The introduction of the ₹2000 denomination banknote in November 2016 was primarily done to quickly satisfy the economy's need for money following the loss of the legal tender status of the ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes that were in use at the time.

After sufficient supplies of notes in other denominations became available, the goal of launching ₹2000 banknotes was achieved. As a result, the printing of ₹2000 banknotes was discontinued in 2018–19, according to the RBI.

The expected life period of the ₹2000 banknotes is about 4-5 years, and about 89 percent of them were printed before March 2017. From March 31, 2018, when it peaked at ₹6.73 lakh crore (37.3 percent of notes in circulation), to March 31, 2023, when it dropped to ₹3.62 lakh crore (10.8% of notes in circulation), the overall value of these banknotes has decreased.