Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said when the opposition was in power, their fiscal deficit quality was poor as they maintained it by cutting expenditure. “But we spent more than what was budgeted and upped it in the last two years,” said Jaitley in the Lok Sabha. Speaking on corruption, the finance minister said, “We were a high cash economy and this economy leads to tax evasion, corruption and a parallel economy. If you are a cashless society, crimes will still take place, but cash is the biggest facilitator of crime,” he said, adding that lakhs and crores of money returned to RBI post demonetisation move by the government initiated last year on November 9.
