Demonetisation’s rude shock: There may not be any black money

[prasad1]

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The main reason given by the government for demonetising high denomination notes was to curb black money. Various estimates have been made of the quantum of such money which is not expected to be deposited in banks ranging from Rs 3 lakh crore to Rs 5 lakh crore. But if one goes by the deposit trends so far and the projections, the black money expected to be purged may be much less. The Narendra Modi government may thus be in for a shock.

On Tuesday, in a reply in Rajya Sabha, the Minister of State for Finance, Arjun Ram Meghwal, said that there were 17,165 million pieces of Rs 500 notes and 6,858 million pieces of Rs 1,000 notes in circulation on November 8, 2016, the day Modi made the announcement of demonetising the two high denomination notes. The total amount of high denomination currency circulating in the system on that day was, thus, Rs 15.44 lakh crore (Rs 8.58 lakh crore in Rs 500 notes and Rs 6.86 lakh crore in Rs 1,000).

On November 28th, the Reserve Bank of India announced that Rs 8.45 lakh crore (Rs 8,44,962 crore) in the banned high denomination notes had been deposited in the banks between November 10 and November 27. Banks were closed on November 9.
This was the value of banned notes deposited in the banks in 18 days, out of the 50 days that the government has permitted bank customers to do so. That too, when huge queues outside banks detered many people from putting money into their accounts.
Further, all commercial banks in India have to maintain a portion of their deposits with the RBI known as cash reserve ratio (CRR). The RBI uses this to manage liquidity in the system.

On November 8, the total amount of actual cash with the RBI as CRR was Rs 4.06 lakh crore (Rs 4,06,900 crore), according to the weekly bulletin of the central bank. This is cash, sent mostly in large currency notes according to bankers, by the banks on any incremental deposit that they have, thus adding to their CRR deposit held with the RBI.
Additionally, banks retain money with themselves to manage day-to-day affair and to provide money on demand by customers. According to the RBI, the average cash-to-deposit ratio of banks in India is 4.69. If four percentage points from this goes as CRR to RBI, amounting to Rs 4.06 lakh crore (on Nov 8, say), the cash with banks would average around Rs 70,000 crore. This would include all denominations, of course.

So, if we take the money deposited in 20 days and add the November 8 CRR to it, that amounts to Rs 12.50 lakh crore. If we further add a portion of the cash-in-hand on November 8, say Rs 50,000 crore, the total amount of money which is not with public in old notes is Rs 13 lakh crore.

There are still 30 days left to deposit banned currency notes. At the rate at which money is being deposited, it stands to reason that Rs 2 lakh crore or more would come into the system till December 30, thus throwing to the winds all calculation of the government to tackle black money. Either the black money is not in high denomination notes or those who have such money may already have put it back into the banking system.
http://indianexpress.com/article/bu...-rude-shock-there-may-not-be-any-black-money/



SO all this pain for no gain.

This exercise was too hollow promise just like Modiji promise of 15 Lacks in each bank account.

 

[prasad1]

[h=1]How PM Modi’s note recall narrative has fallen apart[/h]Three weeks ago, the decision to scrap 500 and 1000-rupee notes was sold as a moral crusade, indeed, as a war on corruption. This narrative has now fallen apart. On November 29, Lok Sabha forced through a bill that ends the war and assures safe passage to those who hold black money in cash.

But this is an even more generous offer when seen in the context of how professional black money holders will perceive this new amnesty scheme. First of all, as we know from income-tax raids in the past, people with black money only have about 6 per cent of it in cash – the rest is usually in the form of land, apartments, gold, jewellery, benami bank accounts and so on.

But for the sake of abundant caution, let us assume the cash percentage is as high as 10 per cent as some insist. For example, let us consider a small-sized operator with Rs 10 crore in black money, of which about Rs 1 crore is in the form of cash. The demonetisation effort, to begin with, only threatened this Rs 1 crore, and that too, to the extent that it was held in the form of Rs 500 or Rs 1000 notes. If we assume that all of it was held in Rs 500 or Rs 1000 notes, then the possibility was of him losing about a tenth of his total illegal wealth. Considering that a well-heeled salary man pays about 30 per cent of his income in taxes every year, the demonetisation move was the equivalent to a slap on the wrist for the black money holder, because in percentage terms, he was in danger of losing only a third of what the honest taxpayer gives to the government every year– and that too if we assume he could convert none of his Rs 500/ Rs 1000 rupee notes to new ones through some shady scheme or another.
http://indianexpress.com/article/bl...n-note-recall-narrative-fallen-apart-4406642/