Prime Minister Manmohan, asked about concerns regarding black money parked by Indians abroad, said he was no astrologer to predict when and how such money could be brought back to India or the quantum of funds stashed abroad.
“I really don’t know the magnitude of the so-called black money; we don’t have a foolproof mechanism to bring this money back to India,” he said.
He said bringing black money back to the country was dependent on cooperation of foreign governments. He said the context of outward unaccounted-for remittances by Indians was fast losing meaning as India has now emerged as a surplus economy and it no longer makes sense for Indians to park money abroad. “We have to create the requisite environment to retain people’s surplus incomes at home,” Dr Singh said.
He also said that rising food prices at home were a matter of concern, but high prices were reflected in the prices of secondary and tertiary commodities like pulses, fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry, and not in primary articles like rice and wheat.
Such price rises were fuelled by increasing consumption that needs to be viewed as a sign of growing prosperity.