Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday unequivocally said that repatriation of black money kept abroad is a “priority” for his Government, as he sought close global coordination to achieve this objective.
Raising the black money issue at an informal meeting of leaders of the five-nation Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) bloc on the sidelines of the G20 summit here, Modi set the tone on this key issue ahead of the G20 summit in the wake of his commitment to bring back every penny of black money stashed abroad. “Repatriation of black money kept abroad is a key priority for us,” Modi told the BRICS leaders.
Calling for close coordination on the issue of black money kept abroad, Modi said this unaccounted money is also linked to security challenges.
As India makes attempts to retrieve the black money, the Prime Minister has already made it clear that close cooperation to retrieve the black money from abroad is a key issue for him. The G20 host Australia on Friday vowed a “very aggressive” crackdown on tax avoidance. India is also seeking strong action by the Group of 20 industrialised and emerging economies against tax havens.
“A key issue for me would be to highlight the importance of international cooperation against black money,” Modi had said, as he is set to renew the country’s commitment at the G20 summit to a global response to deal with cross border tax avoidance and evasion.
India is also expected to urge the G20 to pressure tax havens into revealing more information on black money from India to help retrieve this illegal money.On his part, Prime Minister Modi said the G20 meeting was taking place in the shadow of continued weak global economic growth. He said political turbulence in many parts of the world, and the Ebola pandemic were also factors of concern.
During the interaction, the BRICS leaders, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, South African President Jacob Zuma, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Modi reaffirmed their disappointment and serious concern over the non-implementation of the 2010 International Monetary Fund (IMF) reforms.
In a statement released after the meeting the leaders agreed that the slow action on IMF reforms undermined the “legitimacy and credibility” of IMF.
“Undue delays in ratifying the 2010 agreement are in contradiction with the joint commitment by the G20 leaders since 2009,” Xinhua quoted the statement as saying, adding that if the US failed to ratify the reform agreement by the year-end, the G20 should schedule a discussion of the options for the IMF future reforms in January 2015.
In November 2010, the IMF announced that its board of executive directors had approved historic reforms, including shifting more than 6 per cent of quotas from advanced economies to “dynamic” emerging and developing countries by 2012. The reforms have been broadly believed to be reflecting the increasing economic strength of developing countries.
Making a strong pitch for speeding up the creation of a BRICS development bank, Modi said India hopes to ratify the agreement over the financial institution by year-end and 2016 should be set as the target for its inauguration.
“The historic 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza delivered the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement. These signal our collective capacities to create and manage global institutions,” Modi said.
“We propose that we should set the target of 2016 for inauguration of this Bank. We hope to ratify the agreement by the end of the year. We would soon nominate our candidate for the post of the Presidency,” Modi said, making a strong pitch for the early operationalisation of the bank.
India will hold the Presidency of the $ 100 billion New Development Bank for the first six years. The bank will be based in Shanghai, China’s financial hub.