NDTV: New Delhi: Thursday, September 21, 2017.
The Finance
Ministry says it is examining three reports on the quantum of black money held
by Indians inside the country and abroad that were commissioned by the previous
UPA regime and submitted more than three years ago.
Responding to
an Right To Information or RTI query filed by a Press Trust of India
correspondent, the ministry said information on the findings of the reports was
"exempt from disclosure" under the RTI Act as they were under
examination and were yet to be "taken to" Parliament.
The studies
were conducted by the Delhi-based National Institute of Public Finance and
Policy (NIPFP) and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) as
well as the National Institute of Financial Management (NIFM) in Faridabad.
The NIPFP,
NCAER and NIFM reports were received by the government on December 30, 2013,
July 18, 2014, and August 21, 2014, respectively.
The present
Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power in May 2014.
"Information
is exempt from disclosure under Section 8 (1) (c) of the RTI Act, 2005, as the
study reports received from the three institutes are under examination of the
government and the same along with the government's response on these reports
are yet to be taken to the Parliament through the Standing Committee on
Finance," the finance ministry said in its reply.
The Section
bars "information, the disclosure of which would cause a breach of
privilege of Parliament or the State Legislature".
These reports
have already been submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance. There is at
present no official assessment on the quantum of black money in India and
abroad. A recent study by the US-based think tank Global Financial Integrity
(GFI) said an estimated $770 billion in
black money entered India during 2005-2014.
Nearly $165
billion in illicit money exited the country during the same period, the global
financial watchdog had said.
"The
issue of black money has attracted a lot of public and media attention in the
recent past. So far, there are no reliable estimates of black money generated
and held within and outside the country," the finance ministry had said
while ordering the studies in 2011.
These
estimates were based on various unverifiable assumptions and approximations, it
had said.
"Government
has been seized of the matter and has, therefore, commissioned these
institutions to get an estimation and sense of the quantum of illicit fund
generated and held within and outside the country," the ministry had said.
The Terms of
Reference (ToR) for the studies included assessment or survey of unaccounted
income and wealth and profiling the nature of activities engendering money
laundering both within and outside the country.
While NIPFP
and NIFM are autonomous institutes of the Finance Ministry, NCAER is India's
oldest and largest independent, non-profit, economic policy research institute.
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