New Delhi: After a clampdown on overseas unaccounted wealth and assets, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said the bulk of black money is still within India.
He also said the government is working to promote use of plastic currency.
“We need a change in national attitude where plastic currency becomes the norm and cash an exception. The Government has been working with various authorities to incentivise this change,” said Jaitley in a Facebook post.
He also said the government is at an advanced stage of considering the requirement of furnishing PAN card details if cash transactions beyond a certain limit are undertaken.
“The opening of a large number of payment gateways, Internet banking, payment banks and the emerging reality of e-commerce will prompt the use of banking transactions, and plastic money will rise significantly,” said Jaitley.
The JAM Trinity and Direct Benefit Transfer of subsidies to accounts of beneficiaries of various government schemes will also be a step in the direction of checking black money, he said.
“Each of the 18 crore beneficiaries of Jan Dhan accounts has been provided with RuPay cards, which will encourage them to use plastic currency and get familiarised with it. The MUDRA Yojana, over the next few years, will target six crore (or a similar number of families out of 25 crore families in India) to become entrepreneurs,” said the finance minister.
“Loans made available to them by banks can only be withdrawn from ATMs by use of MUDRA credit cards provided to them. More and more of their transactions will be through plastic currency or through the banking channel,” he said.
The Goods and Services Tax regime, once introduced, will also be a landmark step in this direction. Thus, for commodities like gold, where the exporter’s initial purchase is after payment of custom duty, the subsequent transactions, which are mostly in cash, can easily be tracked, he said.
“The government’s policy is rationalisation of tax structures, taxing at reasonable rates, placing more money in the hands of small earners, encouraging and promoting use of plastic money and creating deterrence against those who continue to use unaccounted-for money,” said the finance minister.
Source: DHNS
