Jaitley inaugurates country's first currency paper unit

BHOPAL: India will no longer require to import its currency paper from Australia and Japan. On Saturday, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley inaugurated the country’s first new pulp line unit for production of bank note paper at Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Jaitley said, “Till date, the Indian currency note was dependent on foreign countries since you need a special kind of paper with ten different security features so it cannot be counterfeited.”
He said it had become a tradition that paper for Indian currency would come from outside and even the security technology would be borrowed from abroad.“The technology needed is now here and the large amount of paper required to print the bigger currency notes will be manufactured in Hoshangabad,” the Union finance minister said. He added that another unit for production of currency note paper will soon be started in Mysore.
In April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked the Reserve bank of India to go `swadeshi’ and use Indian ink and paper to print currency notes. It was part of the PM’s Make In India initiative. On Saturday, Arun Jaitley repeated the same argument saying that the Union government’s policy to print the country’s currency with its own ink and paper.
Jaitley and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan later flagged off a train carrying currency paper to Nashik, where one of the nine units printing and minting Indian money is situated.