2018-01-15 Mon

The government has ordered all the four mints in India to restart producing coins, however at a slower rate. The decision comes after the mints were asked to stop producing coins on 9th January. The Mints will be operational for a single shift, instead of two. Coins of different denominations will be minted. The RBI had asked the government mints to produce 7,712 million coin pieces for 2017-18. 5,900 million units have already been produced. The remaining coins will be minted in the last two and a half months of the fiscal year.

The government had stopped coin production from 9th January due to excess coins in the market and insufficient storage space. The Mints were asked to keep printing banknotes during this period without any overtime for Staff. The Staff had started agitating because the order was affecting their pay. After representations were made to the Centre, the government decided to revoke the order. There were reports that the government mints had 2,528 million coins which were not picked up by the RBI for circulation.