Press Trust Of India
Washington, Jan 5: India’s efforts to bring back black money stashed in foreign countries may not succeed as major western economies, including the US and UK, are the major beneficiaries of illicit funds, a global think-tank has said, underlining that the government should instead focus more on curtailing its outflow of black money which has jumped nine-fold since 2003.
“These are not easy issues to solve. I think it is important that a great deal of importance be focused on curtailing the mechanism by which money continues to go out of India. That has more chance of success than getting black money back into India,” US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) president Raymond Baker said. In a report last month, GFI said the outflow of black money from India to foreign countries has increased nine-fold from USD 10 billion in 2003 to USD 94.7 billion in 2012.
India has replaced Malaysia as the fourth largest exporter of black money after China, Russia and Mexico for the 10-year period from 2003-2012.
These figures are on the conservative side and the actual amount could be much larger, Baker said. “Getting black money back for any country is a hard thing to do, because international mechanism does not basically support this,” he said, noting that the major western countries like the US and UK, which are the main beneficiaries of black money from countries like India would not like to stop this illicit flow of money into their economies.
“There is a kind of global consensus that the money that has been stolen by government officials or corruptly acquired should be returned to the country of origin, but there is no such global understanding with regard to the money generated in the commercial sector which was tax-evading,” Baker pointed out.
The money generated through tax evasion is the bulk of the illicit money that has gone out of India, he said. One of the things, Baker said, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could do “very effectively” is to put this issue much more effectively and solidly on the agenda of the G-20 countires.
