Arun Jaitley reveals the secret of Demonetisation

Washington Oct 11: Finance Ministry Arun Jaitley has revealed the necessity for sudden announcement of demonetization of Rs 500 and 1000 notes.He was speaking at annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In his address, Jaitley has said that "announcing the demonetization initiative in advance could have resulted in people buying gold, diamond, and land and going through various kinds of transactions with the cash they had."

He added that "Transparency is a very nice word. But transparency in this case of demonetization would have been the greatest instrument of fraud".

The finance minister has added that "I think, one of the greatest success of demonetization was that the prime minister and the team obviously the RBI was involved, the finance minister was involved - 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" he added.

Earlier speaking on GST he has said that "despite attempts to derail the recently introduced Goods and Services Tax or GST, the states are adopting the new regime at a fast pace".