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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

'Swiss black money can take India to the top'

n 2006, the most recent Global Financial Integrity study, developing countries lost an estimated $858.6 billion (about Rs 43 lakh crore) to $1.06 trillion (abot Rs 51 lakh crore) in illicit financial outflows. Even at the lower end of the range of estimates, the volume of illicit financial flows coming out of developing countries increased at a compound rate of 18.2 percent over the five-year period analysed for the study. On average, for the five-year period of this study, Asia accounts for approximately 50 percent of overall illicit financial flows from all developing countries.

This report shows that the average amount stashed away from India annually during 2002-06 is $27.3 billion (about 136,466 crore). It means that during the five-year period the amount stashed away is 27.3x5=136.5 billion (about 692,328 crore). It is not that all these amounts went to Swiss banks. It has gone to different tax and secret shelters. The share of Swiss banks in dirty money being a third of the global aggregate, some $45 billion out of the 136.5 billion stashed away from India would have been hoarded in these years in Swiss banks.

The important point is that this is only for five years. More amounts were stashed away during the Nehruvian regime. So the loot for 55 years will be several times higher. In fact, in those days the rupee commanded a better value per dollar. So fewer rupee could get more dollars. So the estimation that the Indian money stashed away may be of the order of $1.4 trillion (about Rs 71 lakh crore).


I question to you that

Isn't it important to tackle the issue of domestic black money?

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