Abu Dhabi: Indian expatriates trying to buy Indian currency before travelling to India are facing a tough time as money exchanges selling rupees have put a quota for each customer and are charging a high rate.
Money exchanges resumed buying and selling of rupee notes recently after stopping it following India’s decision to demonetise Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes on November 8. However, they are still not getting enough rupee notes because of the currency crunch in India.
As Gulf News reported in November, money exchanges in the UAE do not get newly-issued Indian currency notes directly from India because India does not export its currency abroad through official channels. Indian customers sell rupee notes to money exchanges which they then resell to other customers.
“We have started receiving Rs2,000 and Rs100 notes from some customers, but we are unable to stock them because they are immediately sold to other customers who are desperate to buy rupee notes,” said an employee at a money exchange at Abu Dhabi City. However, they were still not receiving the new 500 rupee notes, he said.
He said the exchanges had fixed a sale quota of Rs2,000 per customer. “We don’t buy more than Rs20,000 from a customer as a precaution against fake notes,” said the employee who did not want to be named.
The exchanges buy the rupee at the rate of Rs19 per dirham and sell at Rs15 per dirham.
The staff at another Abu Dhabi exchange said they buy at the rate of Rs20 per dirham and sell at Rs14 per dirham. “Even then there is a huge demand for rupee from expatriates travelling to India. We have a long waiting list of our regular customers who want to buy rupees, and we call them when our stock of rupees is replenished,” he said.
He said some customers even offer a higher rate to the sellers and buy directly from them.
A major money exchange said it has still not started buying new Rs2,000 and 500 notes due to technical reasons.
“We don’t buy these new notes because our staff are not familiar with them and we have to reconfigure our counting and detecting machines to deal with them,” said Sudhir Kumar Shetty, president of the UAE Exchange.
He said they were dealing with a limited stock of Rs100 notes.
“I am not in a position to quote a rate because it is not available at our all our branches,” Shetty said. He said demand for their prepaid cards — named 'go-cash cards' — had increased as they can be used at almost all merchant locations in India.
Adeeb Ahamed, CEO, Lulu Exchange, said the demand for the newly launched currency had gone up. “There is a shortage of the new currency, and any available stocks are quickly sold off in view of the high demand,” he said.
“I am travelling to Goa this Thursday and really concerned about this three-week long vacation,” said Sydney Alfanso, 32, a bank employee in Abu Dhabi.
“This is first time in my 11 years here that I am worried about going to India.”
His relatives and friends have warned him about the hassle of waiting at banks to withdraw money. “I have asked my old parents to go to bank and withdraw some money for me. I feel sorry for them,” Alfanso said.
He said some of his friends had postponed their vacations due to the currency crunch. “They say what would we do there without money!”
