Where’s The Black Money? Almost All Banned Notes Returned: Foreign Media
An amount of 107 billion rupees hasn’t yet been received by the Reserve Bank of India after the cash ban, according to the report.
New Delhi, Aug 30: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to weed out black money through a ban on high-value currency notes haven’t yielded the desired results.
Of the 15.4 trillion rupees ($218 billion) of cash in circulation that was invalidated on November 8, 2016, the government estimated about 5 trillion rupees wouldn’t be returned to banks because it was stashed illegally to avoid tax.
However, data from the central bank’s annual report on Wednesday showed 15.3 trillion rupees, or 99.3 percent, of the banknotes were returned, suggesting there was hardly any unaccounted wealth held in cash.
An amount of 107 billion rupees hasn’t yet been received by the Reserve Bank of India after the cash ban, according to the report.
Money
“Demonetization was a total failure,” said Mohan Guruswamy, chairman of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in New Delhi and a former adviser to the Ministry of Finance. “We could have been on a higher growth trajectory if demonetization had not happened. It was a colossal blunder and there will be political consequences.”
The demonetization exercise has achieved its objective substantially, Subhash Chandra Garg, economic affairs secretary in India’s finance ministry, said in New Delhi, adding that newer notes with more security features have helped weed out fake notes.
