Petrol pump owners faces tough time, receiving `2000 notes in bulk

Chandigarh: The Punjab Petroleum Dealers Association (Regd.) representing the issues of the Petroleum Dealers said that RBI decision to withdraw Rs. 2000 note has again created the same difficult situation at Petrol Pumps across country as was faced during 2016 demonetization drive.
As per the association, the majority of the customers are trying to use Rs 2000 notes even for small purchases of Rs 100-200 and are expecting change from the Petrol Pumps, hence the Petrol Pumps are extremely short of change across the country.
“Since we give change received from the customers only, we request and solicit card or digital payment or would request customer cooperation by tendering exact or reasonable note denomination as per their purchase amount at our outlets,” said the association in its statement.
The association requested the RBI to give guidelines to banks for providing enough small denomination notes, especially to Petrol pumps in lieu of Rs 2000 notes so that they can smoothly serve their customers.
“Before this Rs 2000 withdrawal, we used to receive only 10% of our cash sale through Rs 2000 note, but now almost 90% of our cash received at our outlets is in the form of Rs 2000 notes only and we have to deposit the same in the banks on daily basis. We are afraid that we would again face problems due to the current scenario as we faced after demonization as most dealers received Income Tax Notices/Raids without any fault of them as they received more payments during that period due to increased sale and outstanding payment from Credit Customers,” stated the association.
it also added, that digital payments, which used to be @40% of our daily sales has suddenly gone down to 10- 20% of daily sales and our cash sales has increased dramatically as customers are desperately trying to use Rs 2000 which will again create trouble for us with Income Tax Authorities. We serve the nation and the customers 24/7/365 and would like the customers to understand our problem of short change and that we cannot provide change against every Rs 2000 note.