99 percent of the demonetized notes were deposited in Banks, says RBI
The Reserve Bank of India announced that 99 per cent of the demonetized Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were deposited in banks or exchanged.
As on June 30, 2017, notes worth Rs 15.28 lakh crore were deposited by people, according to RBI’s annual report. At least Rs 16,000 crore did not return to the system as the total value of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in circulation was Rs 15.44 lakh crore. And RBI spent Rs 7,965 crore, nearly half of the Rs 16,000 crore gain, for printing new notes between July 2016 and June 2017.
After Narendra Modi led Union government scrapped the old denomination of 500 and 1000, people across the country had immense hardship due to the slow pace of remonetisation.
Long queues outside the ATMs was the usual scene after November 8 in 2016 and businesses were hit as the country’s economy was largely cash-driven.
The disruption it caused raises questions over the overall gains made and its impact on the economy.
According to a report by Forbes magazine at least 100 people died in the due process of demonetization.
Defending the demonetisation move, the government had repeatedly said it would curb terror financing and dent the drug trafficking industry as they heavily rely on counterfeit notes.
Meanwhile, many opposition leaders have lashed out at the Union government after the report was made public.
Continuing with the attacks on the Narendra Modi-government over the purported failure of demonetisation, former Finance Minister and a Congress leader P Chidambaram said the controversial move in fact gave an opportunity to the black money hoarders to convert it to white money.
“This was a cost-free conversion of black money into white money,” Chidambaram said in an interview with ET Now.
Demonetisation provided the black money hoarders a very convenient mechanism to make their black money white.
In a harsh criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation, All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday said that it was because of the former’s ‘impulsive’ decision that people were pushed into distress and the country lost 2 per cent GDP. Owaisi termed demonetisation as a “complete disaster”.
KV Correspondent
