Demonetisation: More steps to ease cash crunch

New Delhi: Under pressure to ease the liquidity crunch, the Centre on Wednesday announced a series of new measures to help farmers get more cash in the ongoing rabi sowing season and waived off transaction charges on debit cards in order to encourage cashless transactions across the country.

To promote greater use of debit cards, economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das said the public sector banks and some private banks had decided to waive transaction charges till December 31. Telecom operators have already waived transaction charges for SMS-based banking called USSD to enable financial transactions through feature phones till the end of December. “To promote greater usage of payments through e-wallets, the RBI has decided to increase the monthly transaction limit for individuals from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. Similar enhancements have also been announced by the RBI for merchants,” said Mr Das.

The railway ministry had already announced on Tuesday that train tickets booked through the IRCTC website will not attract service charge till December 31. Rs 20 is levied as service tax on sleeper and Rs 40 on AC classes for booking tickets through IRCTC. This would facilitate and encourage passengers to buy e-tickets instead of across-the-counter purchases through cash, said Mr Das. The daily average number of passengers buying e-tickets online is 58 per cent, and across-the-counter purchase in cash is 42 per cent of the total sale of tickets.

The civil aviation ministry had also announced that there would be no parking charges at airports across India till November 28.

Mr Das said Nabard will provide Rs 21,000 crores in loans to district central cooperative banks (DCCBs for rabi agricultural operations. This will enable the DCCBs to disburse crop loans to farmers through the network of Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS).

“In India, around 40 per cent of small and marginal farmers avail loans through cooperative banks, and this move will benefit them,” said Mr Das.

The government has already raised the cash withdrawal limit for farmers to Rs 25,000 per week and allowed them to buy seeds through old Rs 500  notes from government undertakings.

Mr Das said all government organisations and public sector undertakings have been advised to use only digital payment methods to make payments to contractors and employees. At the point of disbursing payments, it will be necessary for the them to provide the option of payments through cards, Internet banking, unified payment interface, cards and Aadhar-enabled payment systems.

Mr Das said a lot of time was spent by vehicles at all the checkposts and toll plazas. “While GST will address the problem at checkposts, certain measures are necessary for ease of payment at toll plazas on the national highways. The road transport and highways ministry is therefore advising automobile manufacturers to provide ETC-compliant RFID in all new vehicles,” the economic affairs secretary added.