In a country like India where many education, healthcare, and infrastructure projects have been left in lurch due to financial crisis, the Indian economy has suffered a massive blow of USD 123 billion in black money between 2001-2010, the only South Asian country to figure in the top 20 list of such nations, a US-based research and advocacy firm said in a report.
As per the report “Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2001-2010,” India, which turned out to be the decade’s 8th largest victim of illicit financial outflow, incurred loss of USD 123 billion in 10 years, followed by Mexico (USD 476 billion), Malaysia (USD 285 billion), Saudi Arabia (USD 201 billion), Russia (USD 152 billion), the Philippines (USD 138 billion) and Nigeria (USD 129 billion). Adding the woes, in 2010 only, the Indian economy suffered USD 1.6 billion in illicit financial outflows.
Authored by Dev Kar and Sarah Freitas, the report said that all developing and emerging economies suffered USD 858.8 billion in illicit outflows in 2010, just below the all-time high of USD 871.3 billion set in 2008-the year preceding the global financial crisis.
Commenting on the development, Dev Kar, GFI lead economist and co-author of the report said, “USD 123 billion is a massive amount of money for the Indian economy to lose. This is more than USD 100 billion which could have been used to invest in education, healthcare, and upgrade the nation’s infrastructure. Perhaps last summer’s electrical blackout would have been avoided if some of this money had remained in India and been used to invest in the nation’s power grid.”
Echoing for the same, GFI director Raymond Bake said, “While progress has been made in recent years, India continues to lose a large amount of wealth in illicit financial outflows.”
Recently, the UPA government presented “White Paper on Black Money” to address the issue of black money and corruption in public life which will set the tone for an equitable, transparent and a more efficient economy.
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