Shortage of cash will end by mid-January: Amitabh Kant

The Dollar Business Bureau 

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Friday that shortage of cash due to demonetisation of high denomination bank notes will end by middle of January 2017.

He said that by that time about Rs.3 trillion worth of black money would be wiped out of the economy, leaving around Rs.12 trillion of cash to finance regular transactions.

The disruption was unavoidable as the country aspires to become a $10 trillion economy, Kant said while addressing the 89th Annual General Meeting of FICCI in New Delhi.

Kant is the chairman of the high-level committee created by the government for identifying all possible digital payment modes across sectors as it is pushing on with its drive for a cashless economy.

He stated that for sustaining a growth rate of 7.5%, digitisation is vital as the country cannot bear to have a parallel economy created by high level of cash transactions.

Kant assured that India has the infrastructure for digitisation and can leverage the JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile) trinity.

The NITI Aayog Chief Executive informed that the government has launched several incentive schemes which are aimed to promote digital payments like Digi Dhan Vyapari Yojna and Lucky Grahak Yojana.

“The cash handling would be expensive in future by way of a cess and transaction cost on digital payments would be minimal,” he added.

He also assured the merchants and traders that when they move towards digitisation tax officials would not harass them by way of scrutiny of their previous years’ records of accounts.