TRANSPARENCY IN DEMO WOULD HAVE LED TO FRAUD: JAITLEY
WASHINGTON: Finance minister Arun Jaitley has defended the government’s decision to maintain secrecy over demonetisation, saying transparency in this case would have been the “greatest instrument of fraud”.
Jaitley, who is on a week-long visit to the US to attend the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, also said that the series of reforms like demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax has put the Indian economy on a “far more stronger track”.
“These are institutional reforms. These structural changes, I think have put the Indian economy on a far more sound track so that we can look forward for a much cleaner, much bigger India economy in the days and years to come,” Jaitley said addressing students of the Columbia University.
He said that announcing demonetisation in advance could have resulted in people buying gold, diamond and land and going through various kinds of transactions with the cash they had. “Transparency in this case (of demonetisation) would have been the greatest instrument of fraud... Secrecy was the essence of that decision making (process). I think, one of the greatest success of demonetisation was that the prime minister and the team kept it a closely guarded secret.”
“Otherwise in a process where a decision is taken, alternate currency is printed, thousands of people involved in the printing do not know why they are doing it, the currency is collected, tabulated and sent to the currency chest and one has to be ready with the alternate currency the moment it is demonetised and still we were able to keep it a closely guarded secret.”