NEW DELHI: Will the country finally know for sure how much black money is stashed away by Indians in and outside India? According to Finance Ministry sources, a Parliamentary panel is examining three reports on the quantum of black money held by Indians both inside and outside the country. “They may not include the latest numbers, since the study was conducted during the previous government,” sources in the Finance Ministry said.
While it is understood that the reports were submitted three years ago, they had not been made public since they were not vetted by the Standing Committee on Finance. With sources saying that they had finally been cleared, it is expected that once they are examined by the panel, they could be made public.
The three reports, prepared by the Delhi-based National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and National Institute of Financial Management (NIFM), Faridabad, were received by the government on December 30, 2013, July 18, 2014, and August 21, 2014, respectively, according to officials involved in the process.
“The issue of black money has attracted a lot of public and media attention in the recent past. So far, there are no reliable estimates of black money generated and held within and outside the country,” the Finance ministry had said while ordering the studies in 2011. The studies examined the assessment of unaccounted income and wealth, while researching and compiling a list on the nature of activities which helped in money laundering.
The NDA government in 2015 had said in the Lok Sabha that “various non-governmental organizations and economists in the past have indicated widely varying estimations regarding illicit financial flows out of the country. Such estimations appear to be based upon different sets of facts, assumptions, presumptions, etc. leading to widely varying inferences. Such estimations also appear to lack unanimity and reliability. The subject matter, therefore, does not appear amenable to reliable estimation.”
Focus on finding causes for black money creation
The Terms of Reference (ToR) for the studies included assessment or survey of unaccounted income and wealth and profiling the nature of activities engendering money laundering both within and outside the country. The studies were to identify, among other issues, important sectors in which unaccounted money was generated and examine causes that drove generation.