Telangana to go cashless

Hyderabad: To deal with the financial crisis arising out of the demonetisation scheme launched by the Centre, Telangana government has decided to adopt cashless transactions for all economic activities both in private and public sectors and encourage people to rely on e-Payments in the days to come.

Briefing the media after a 4-hour long cabinet meeting on the impact of demonetisation, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao said that regular trade practices and payments through bank transactions,

introduction of netbanking at all levels and more use of swiping machines and mobile apps would be brought in to put the economy back on track.

This, he said, would take couple of months.

KCR said the government is also preparing ‘TS Wallet’ – which can be downloaded and used by everyone in the state for regular money transactions without currency notes.

This application would be made available in about a month’s time.

Stating that the government is facing a critical period following demonetisation, he said: “We have to survive as a state. It is not the time to play the role of a spectator.

To ease the situation, state should move fast towards adopting cashless transactions.”

The Chief Minister said around Rs 75,000 crore is the money that is circulating in the state. Of this about 80 percent consists of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Following demonetisation about Rs 32,000 crore has become invalid currency.

The RBI has pumped in Rs 12,500 crore in Telangana for money circulation and majority of the currency is of Rs 2,000 notes.

KCR stressed on more supply of lower demonetisation notes and said that Rs 2,000 note was not very useful for the people.

He said that Rs 2,000 note was proving to be a show piece with people not being able to buy anything from it.

However, when asked whether the Central government took a wise decision in introducing Rs 2,000 note after banning Rs 1,000 citing black money as the reasons, he said that there was a secret behind introduction of Rs 2,000 note.

He said he could not disclose everything that he learnt from the Prime Minister about the demonitisation issues.

He said the cabinet decided that now onwards all the high-value transactions in Land Registrations, Commercial Taxes and Excise wings would be done through netbanking. e– cash would be encouraged for the payments in the market yards, fair price shops and milk federations.

However, the state has another problem to grapple with in introducing cashless transactions. It does not have sufficient bank branches. At present, there are only 5,200 bank branches in the state.

Stating that it was the real estate sector which had received a big setback, KCR said that to provide immediate relief to the construction workers who lost their livelihood after the construction activity had come to a standstill in the Greater Hyderabad, the government has decided to speed up the two-bedroom housing scheme so that the workers would get instant employment. Rs 5,000 crore has already been released for the housing projects, he added.

KCR said that the state government was yet to take a final decision on payment of salaries to government employees.

He said that the government was speaking to bankers as employees were asking a part of salary in cash. He said there was no problem with regard to payment of Aasra pensions.