FM Jaitley appeals to nation to carry out online transactions

New Delhi: The Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has appealed the nation to carry out most of their transactions online. “This kind of currency replacement cannot happen overnight, it takes time and I urge people to transact online till then,” the Finance Minister said.

After an emergency meet with State Bank of India and Central Bank heads on Saturday, the Finance Minister said that due to some technology limitations, it is taking time to calibrate ATMs to new currency notes as they are of different size. “Nearly half of the ATM counters out of the total populations are dysfunctional,” the FM stated.

Jaitley said, “If we had re-calibrated ATMs earlier, we couldn't have maintained the secrecy.” “The process is on but since the new notes are of different size, it will take time to re-calibrate the ATMs to them,” Jaitley said.

Highlights of Arun Jaitley’s speech:

• The currency replacement around the country is being continuously monitored by the government.
• Demonetisation and replacement of new currency is a massive operation and it has just started.
• I want to thank especially the people of the country who have gone to the banks for currency replacement. They have maintained order
• The banking employees have managed the action along with the usual duties well.
• The SBI and its organisations handle 20-25% of the total banking in the country.
• SBI has deposited 37,868 crores in bank since Thursday.
• I appeal to businesses to take up digital payments and electronic transactions.
• Some people are trying to take advantage of situation, like we saw yesterday with salt.
• People have come in such large numbers, and they will keep coming back for some time.
• I request them to come after the crowd thins out a bit. So they are being done gradually.

Jaitley on reactions of political parties:

• Some people have a special problem to this effort of cleansing.
• The goal of this is to clean transactions, clean money.
• Government will not accept that there will be illegal transactions in billions and will keep an eye on it.
• There have been many political statements and some have been very irresponsible
• Congress has asked why they need to stand in queues for the money which is theirs. The country has the right to know if tax was paid on them.
• The news of random searches by revenue department is wrong.