Increase use of cheques, plastic money to counter black money menace: Jaitley
28 Mar 2015
Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Friday stressed the need to take steps to encourage people to use more and more accounted money and discourage the use of unaccounted currency.
Towards this, he emphasised the need for increased use of plastic money and cheques so that black money generated through domestic sources can be curbed to some extent.
The finance minister said more and more people should be incentivised to use plastic money such as credit cards, Rupay cards and cheques or any other negotiable instrument. They should be discouraged to use hard currency or unaccounted money, he added.
''As the economy grows, there is a roadmap, and the roadmap is that more and more people start discarding the use of currency and switch over to either cheques or plastic currency,'' he said in his address during the Foundation Day celebrations of Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL) on Friday.
The finance minister said that most developed countries such as the UK and the USA have a highest denomination of currency in form of £50 and $100 currency notes, respectively. This, he added, helps in discouraging hoarding and use of unaccounted wealth.
Further, he said, since the financial inclusion has connected more and more households to banks and RuPay cards have been issued to people even to those below the poverty line, there is now need to launch a campaign to create an awareness among them for using more and more RuPay cards which can be a game changer as far as India is concerned.
The government has taken steps to incentivise the use of credit and debit cards and putting a cap on cash transactions.
Quoting PAN has been made mandatory for all sale and purchase of over Rs1 lakh. He also proposed to amend the Income Tax Act to prohibit acceptance or payment of an advance of Rs20,000 or more in cash for purchase of immovable property.
