New Delhi: The government on Wednesday said note ban has achieved the objectives “quite substantially” as it helped curb black money flows, even as the RBI data showed that 99.3 per cent of junked notes came back to the banking system.

Economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said demonetisation was was able to curb terrorist finan-cing and promote digital payments. Now, the system now has about Rs 3-4 lakh crore less currency than it would have been if the system would have continued in the old manner, he said here.

On November 8, 2016, the government cancelled the legal validity of old Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. “We have said in the past also I think demonetisation has achieved its objectives quite substantially,” Mr Garg said here.

When asked to elaborate on the objectives achieved, he said, “I don’t want to give a lecture on that”.

Following the note ban, he said not a single incident of high qu-ality fake note has been detected in the system in the last one year and ten months.