Demonetisation: Clouds hover over withdrawal of Dec salaries in Kerala

The minister asserted that presenting the budget in January would be "difficult"

With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) indicating that there is going to be a shortage of currency notes, Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac on Friday said the withdrawal of December salaries could be a problem.

Interacting with the media in Kozhikode on Friday morning, Issac said while the state government will credit the entire amount required for payment of salaries and pensions for the month of December into the bank and treasury accounts of the people, it could be a problem for people to withdraw the money.

"The requirement for disbursement of salaries and pensions every month is around Rs 1,400 crore, but the RBI and other banking officials have already indicated to us that they are able to provide only around Rs 600 crore. And hence, the permissible withdrawal which now stands at Rs 24,000 could be hit," said the economist-turned-Finance Minister Isaac.

"We have not agreed to it and asked all the officials (RBI and other banks) that they are duty bound to see currencies are made available," he said.

Issac also said that given the present scenario, presenting the budget in January would be a "difficult".

"The situation is such that none is able to gauge what the revenue and expenditure is going to be in the light of the demonetisation," Issac said.

"While Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley claims that tax collections have gone up, we will have to wait for some more time to see what the actual position is," Issac added.

He also said: "For a budget to be realistic, one should be able to reasonably estimate. We will wait for the union budget to be presented and once that's done, I will present my budget either at the end of February or early March."