Vendors of Bhubaneswar Unit I market collect coins from a special mobile counter in the market. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 11: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has started distributing coins to vendors at market places in an attempt to meet a shortage of loose change in the capital. Coins worth Rs 12 lakh were given to businessmen in Unit I market today for the first time this year.

For the past several months, there has been a scarcity in coins in the market and this had become a problem for day-to-day business transactions in the city. Traders had been complaining of the lack of coins that had been affecting their business.

“Since coins were few and far between, we had to give our customers other items instead of the change. Sometimes we had to get coins from unofficial sources who try to make profits out of this,” said Trilochan Jena, a vendor in Unit I market. He said the coins given by the RBI would help.

RBI officials said each individual was provided with coins worth Rs 1,000. “We gave them Rs 500 in denomination of Rs 5, Rs 400 in the denomination of Rs 2 and Rs 100 in Re1 denomination,” said Muralidhar Nayak, deputy treasurer, RBI Bhubaneswar, who was in charge of the coin exchange programme. Sources said that 1,200 people were provided with coins today.

Nayak said that in the coming days many such drives would be carried out in the city at various market places. “Such a drive will be carried out at Unit IV market tomorrow and at other places such as Damana, Khandagiri, Rasulgarh and so on later,” he said.

RBI officials said that the shortage in coins in the city was artificially created. Everyday, coins worth more than Rs 5 lakh are supplied through the RBI counter and 13 currency chests all across the capital. Sources said that all over the state coins worth more than Rs 2 crore are provided to the general public every month through 130 chest offices present across the state.

A senior official of the RBI said that there were several reasons for the shortage in coins in the state. Some people stockpile coins at their homes contributing to the artificial shortage. Besides, coins from Orissa are transported to other states where RBI counters and chest offices are fewer in number. The other reason was illegal racketeering of these coins to outside the state as well as to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Sources said that five years ago, it came to the knowledge of the authorities of RBI Bhubaneswar during periodic meetings that coins of Rs 2 were being smuggled to Bangladesh and being converted into eight or 10 blades of high quality. So, from a Rs 2 coin, the racket was making a profit of more than Rs 10.