Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said that all ingredients of Indian currency can be manufactured in the country.
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He made this statement at the 'Make in India- Indigenisation of Currency' event and said that it was time that India started printing with its own paper and ink.
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"We have now started, last week, manufacturing paper, which is required for Indian high denomination currency notes. But that also is only a fraction of our requirement - some 6,000 tonnes out of 20,000 tonnes requirement. Very soon the machinery at Mysore will get ready, but the requirements may also go up. Printing ink has already started being manufactured; printing (currency) will take place in India," he said.
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Last week Jaitley inaugurated a facility to manufacture indigenous currency paper in Hoshangabad district in Madhya Pradesh state.
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Currently, the currency notes of bigger denomination are printed on imported paper.
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The new facility in Hoshangabad and Mysuru will print currency notes in adequate quantity to meet the needs of the nation.
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The facility in Mysuru will have the capacity of 12,000 tonnes and is expected to start functioning by end of the year.
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This will also save the central government millions of rupees in the coming years and also reduce the diversion of the paper supplied by foreign countries to other destinations for the purpose of generating fake currency.