Digital Economy Is Gradually Becoming Normal, after Demonetization: Arun Jaitley

The aftermath of demonetization drive last year, the Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley said the step has led towards making country more reliant on digital modes of transaction.

The Finance Minister further said that earlier, it had never been a concern for any of the stakeholders of the economy to migrate into digital economy.

It was post November last year that the country moved ahead from cash based transactions to cashless transactions, thus solving different problems including lower tax base, hassle of 2 sets of account books, enabling digital as the new normal.

Listing the gains of the note ban drive of the government, the Minister informed that the prime focus of the government was to squeeze the higher denomination currency note from the economy, which the Reserve Bank have been positively implementing.

Secondly, the government intended to boost the tax-base, and thirdly the intention was to migrate into a digital transaction based economy, the Minister added.

The Minister made the following remarks during the launch event of a Google mobile application ‘Tez’, that allows users to do financial transactions including sending money, receiving payments directly into their bank accounts and paying bills.

The mobile application further offers the option to link the app to the user’s bank accounts. The application is powered by the government’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI).

The finance minister made the first transaction on the application, launching the app.