After the demonetisation figures released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed that 99 percent of the banned notes were returned to the banking system by the public, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said note ban had a positive impact on their objectives of formalisation of economy, attack on black money and a cashless economy.

Jaitley said some people are stressing on the windfall gain by the RBI as a result of demonetisation which was never the objective.

"It is not about how much we gained. The objective was formalisation of the economy, attack on black money, making the system less dependent on cash, blow to terrorism...Each of these areas have received extremely positive effect due to demonetisation," Jaitley told reporters after the RBI's annual report was released.

He said India was a high-cash economy but after note ban it has decreased significantly.

Jaitley stressed that that the much debated move has also helped in expanding the tax base of the country. He said both direct and indirect taxes have increased.

"Those dealing in cash were now compelled to deposit notes. The anonymity with cash is now gone," he said adding that it can now be identified as to who the money belongs to.

Another objective, besides the integration of formal and informal economies, was expansion of digitisation.

The Reserve Bank, which has so far shied away from disclosing the actual number of junked currency deposited after November 8 last year, said in its Annual Report for 2016-17 that Rs 15.28 lakh crore of the junked currency had come back into the banking system, leaving only Rs 16,050 crore out.

The demonetisation was hailed as a step that would curb black money, corruption and check counterfeit currency but RBI said just 7.1 pieces of Rs 500 note per million in circulation and 19.1 pieces of Rs 1,000 notes per million in circulation were found to be fake in its sample survey.

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