Not all money back in bank is legitimate money, Jaitley says on RBI Report

New Delhi, Aug 31: Seeking to blunt the criticism of the note ban move following RBI report that 99 per cent of the demonetised currency was back in the bank, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the fact that the money was deposited In the bank did not make it legitimate money. Nobody was saying that the black money had been totally eliminated after demonetisation, Mr Jaitley said in an interaction at the India Summit of the Economist. The RBI had yesterday issued its annual report in which it had said that about 99 per cent of Rs 15.44 lakh-crore demonetised currency came back into the system. The Finance Minister said the demonetisation will benefit in medium and long term even if it hits GDP in two or three quarters, and one more benefit was that the the economy will gain due to formalisation of informal sector. He said the GST and demonetisation, will cumulatively give a "significant boost" to direct tax revenues as note ban had widened the tax base. The Finance Minister said the note ban had ended anonymity surrounding money. He also said that the Government had been able to avoid the inflationary impact of the the Goods and Services Tax (GST) inflationary impact has been avoided and there was a scope of convergence of tax rates going forward. On NPAs, he said that it will take some time to resolve the problemtime, adding that if the private sector cannot pay back its loans, someone else should be allowed to take over. UNI