Former chief statistician Pronab Sen called demonetisation a “failure”, saying that 99.30 per cent demonetised currency notes coming back to bank accounts is an “expected” development, News 18 reported.
“Whether demonetisation has failed or not depends on its objective. It was pegged on hordes of notes that were stashed and that it will never come back. It was said that this amount would be over Rs 3 lakh crore. If that was the objective then yes, it has failed because Rs 13,000 crore is the amount, which is possibly held outside the country in nations such as Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Burma who simply did not have the facility to exchange the currency,” said Sen.
Sen added, “Anybody who had any understanding of how black money works, knew that this will be result. I was pretty sure most of it will come back. Reason for this is that nobody sits on black money. Very few people keep it in cash unless for some temporary measures. They generally sit on it for a little while and deploy on a return-yielding activity.”
In its annual report released on Wednesday, RBI stated that 99.3 per cent – notes worth Rs 15.31 lakh crore – of the Rs 500 and 1,000 notes, that were banned overnight in November 2016, have returned to the banks.