Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday told Rajya Sabha that ever since Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014, the black money deposited in Swiss National Bank has reduced by 80 per cent.
Swiss National Bank (SNB) figures quoted in the media “The figures published by the SNB are regularly mentioned in the Indian media as a reliable indicator of the amount of assets held with Swiss financial institutions in respect of Indian residents. More often than not, the media reports have not taken account of the way the figures have to be interpreted, which has resulted in misleading headlines and analyses. Moreover, it is frequently assumed that any assets held by Indian residents in Switzerland are undeclared (so-called ‘Black Money’).”
Further they have said “To analyze Indian residents’ deposits held in Switzerland, another data source should be used. This is the so-called “locational banking statistics”, which the SNB collects in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).”
The data collected by Swiss National Bank in collaboration with Bank for International Settlements (BIS) shows that the loans and deposits of Indians, other than Banks, in the Swiss banks decreased by 34.5% in the year 2017 as compared to 2016. Further, there has been significant reduction in Swiss non-bank loans and deposits of Indians by 80.2% between 2013 and 2017.
The detection and taxing undisclosed money abroad is a continuous process. The Government has taken various proactive steps against the black money stashed abroad which have led to positive results.
The Indian government had on December 21, 2017 signed an agreement with Switzerland to curb the menace of black money. The minister said that both countries started collecting data in accordance with global standards from January 1, 2018 and would start the exchange of data from September 2019 on a yearly basis.
