Digital transactions to be new normal, says Finance minister Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday that demonetisation indicated a shift in the policymaking psychology and the transitory pain was “regrettable” but would lead to a “cleaner economy and better GDP growth in the long run”.
“PM had the broad shoulders to face the consequence of this... This option will certainly leave footprints behind as far as future is concerned,” he said at the valedictory function of Petrotech 2016.He said the economy was headed for a “very major change” in the long term and this marked a turn where policymakers in India would not shy away even from taking very difficult decisions.
The FM said the most important event in Indian history was India’s independence. “It (independence) was accompanied by pain, the largest migration of population for years. When you are changing the mode of payment, this is a very small incident compared to that,” he said. “For two years we have continued to be fastest. Few years from now, we hope to evolve from a developing emerging economy to a developed economy.”
Acknowledging the shortage of cash in the system, Jaitley said the scarcity was being made up in parallel with rising digital transactions, which will soon be the new normal.
Jaitley said the long-term advantage of this new normal was that more money would come into the banking system, capacity of banks to support the economy would go up and low-cost funds would be available with banks.