With restrictions on cash withdrawals yet to ease, Russia and some other countries have warned India of a possibility of similar curbs being imposed on its own diplomats abroad.
The Ministry of Finance is yet to act on the recommendation of an inter-ministerial task force to ask Reserve Bank of India to provide further exemptions to the foreign diplomatic missions from the weekly cash withdrawal limit, which was imposed after the government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. This has put the Ministry of External Affairs in a tight spot, as it is now finding it difficult to placate the foreign diplomatic missions.
Moscow already subtly threatened to impose cash withdrawal limits on Indian diplomats. “Please just imagine if we in Moscow mirror this order of the State Bank of India, when Roubles 50,000 will not be enough to pay for a decent dinner in a restaurant, not to mention the functioning of such big embassy as ours in New Delhi or India’s in Moscow,” Russia’s Ambassador to India, Alexander M Kadakin, already wrote to the Chief of Protocol at the Ministry of External Affairs, Sanjay Verma.
Not only Russia, the diplomatic missions of some other countries, too, sent out such veiled threats during their discussions with the MEA officials, sources told the DH.
“We are hoping that the MEA will be able to make the Ministry of Finance understand the issues involving the access of funds of foreign missions and the difficulties we are experiencing while conducting our day-to-day operations,” said Dominican Republic’s envoy to India, Hans Dannenberg Castellanos, who, as Dean of Diplomatic Corps, represents 157 foreign missions in New Delhi. Kadakin wrote to Verma last week after State Bank of India conveyed to the Russian embassy in New Delhi that it could withdraw Rs 50,000 from its account every week.
SBI told the Russian embassy that it had adequate cash, but it could not allow the mission to withdraw without permission from RBI. “Such cash amount is totally inadequate as regards to the embassy’s salary, operations expenditure requirements. The Consulates General of Russian Federation in Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai are already facing similar problems due to withdrawal limits in the respective banks,” wrote Moscow’s envoy to New Delhi.
Demonetisation and the consequent cash crunch and withdrawal limits have created problems for many foreign missions. The Embassy of Kazakhstan is having problems arranging celebrations of its Independence Day on December 16. Sources said the Embassy of Indonesia was finding it difficult to make preparations for the forthcoming visit of that country’s President Joko Widodo to New Delhi.
The embassies of Iran, Cuba and Sudan are also upset over the inconveniences experienced by their nationals who do not have access to credit cards due to international sanctions on their respective countries.
The US embassy in New Delhi introduced a lottery system to fix a specific timeslots for its officials to go to the ATM within the embassy premises just to make sure that all of them do not take break from their work for cash withdrawal.