Assuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India Inc’s “full support” in the fight against black money and corruption, industry body Assocham on Thursday said that though the short–term hardship would lead to long-term cleaning up of the economy, some immediate relief should be considered for the industry, SMEs and trade.
Assocham also reiterated full industry commitment to the earlier initiatives like income disclosures and foreign money, which, it said, have all been received well by all the right thinking people, the industry body said on the 10th day of demonetisation of the ₹1,000 and ₹500 currency notes.
Suggesting a number of relief measures to deal with the current situation, it said in a statement that non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) should also be allowed to accept old notes till December 31, 2016, subject to certain safeguards like crediting the amount only to the borrowers’ accounts and strict adherence to the money laundering laws.
It said the weekly limit of ₹50,000 per week from the current account is too meagre. Besides, banks are not clear about it as yet and several of them are not implementing the current account limit. The small and medium enterprises, which employ casual labour on a big scale should be provided a special dispensation.
“A limit can be fixed according to size of the sales turnover of a company and depending on the sectors.”
Even though India Inc operates in the organised sector of the economy, which is connected electronically or through banking transactions like cheque payments, it has strong linkages with a large part of the unorganised sectors including agriculture, casual labour, transportation and other services. Likewise, for the entire distribution chain for the items of mass consumption, the value chain from the retail to the large distributors is not totally cheque or electronically payment driven.
Assocham said the Centre may consider extending the same facilities as are being given to state-owned petrol pumps and cooperative stores for temporary trade in ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes, subject a ceiling of ₹5,000 per customer who furnishes a proper ID to the retailers.
Besides, traders can also be asked to maintain strict stock details with fool proof system against back-dated transactions and other misuses.
Considering the limitations of the Income Tax Departments, the staff of the State governments and other Central departments can be deployed with a provision of strict penalties on any misuse.
It said the chamber has also received queries from members regarding exchange of currency by NRIs, who have asked if they “can they exchange notes from the branches of Indian banks branches operating overseas as well as from the other international banks”.