Adi Godrej on demonetisation: Adi Godrej, Chairman Godrej Group has hailed demonetisation policy implemented by PM Modi, however, he condemned the Indian government for hastily moving towards a cashless society which according to him has bleak chances of reaching the fruition stage anytime soon.
Adi Godrej on demonetisation – It would be difficult to bring the dream of ‘cashless society’ to fruition especially in ‘rural India’
Furthermore, he said that the Modi government moving towards “a cashless economy is trying to achieve too much too soon.” He said, “No economy in the world is a cashless economy. All economies, even advanced economies, which have a lot of transactions online, etc, use quite a lot of cash. So to try and get into a cashless economy situation especially in rural India, etc, to my mind, will be very difficult.“
“Even though black money may be kept in other forms, there is a significant amount getting out of circulation. There will be a considerable disincentive to generate further black money“, Godrej added.
Commenting on the Goods and Services tax bill which will be implemented from 2017, he said – “There will be no scope for evading indirect taxes. This is the major cause for black money. Even the direct tax evasion is largely because of indirect tax evasion.”
Godrej said that the government’s estimations have not been accurate enough to predict how much the economy depends upon the cash based transactions. While he said that it would be a tedious task to make the ‘cashless society’ a success especially in the remote areas of the country, he remarked that even the big economies of the world have a major chunk of their economy being driven by cash transactions even though the online transactions are also quite popular there.
