Reserve Bank of India is currently in final steps to finalise the announcement of 200 rupee note and the announcement might take place as early as the end of August.
According to sources close to the development, the central bank has been emphasising on having enough printed note to ensure smooth circulation and before the official launch, it wants to be completely sure of the same. At the time of demonetization, there were reports of the illegal copy being in circulation and people were getting fooled because of the limited supply of newly launched note. RBI seems to have learnt from the mistakes and is reportedly working on printing at least 50 crore notes before putting them in the market. This will ensure that no illegal trade takes place in the initial days and a smooth circulation follows the launch.
According to the above-quoted source, RBI expects 200 rupee note to be popular as there is no denomination currently available between the range of 100 and 500.
We tried reaching out to RBI spokesperson for a comment over the same, however, the email was not answered till the time of this story being written.
Over the last few months, central government, as well as RBI, have been advocating the need to remove high denomination notes from the system. In a recent statement in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley had stated that the high denomination currency (500 and 2000 rupee notes) currently accounts for 70 percent of the total circulating currency, which is a steep decline compared to 86% in high denomination notes before demonetization.