Retail traders' body slams demonetisation move

A retail traders' body today criticised the Centre's move to demonetise higher value currency notes, saying it the Union government did not do proper homework before announcing the decision.
"The Union government seems to have not done its home work properly before announcing the decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes", Federation of Retail Trade Welfare Association (FRTWA) chief Viren Shah said.
Speaking to reporters at 'Matoshri' after meeting Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray here, Shah demanded that the government scrap Value Added Tax (VAT) and Income Tax (IT).
He claimed that the business of retail traders has come to a grinding halt because of the decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.

"In the months of November-December the business of the traders is usually in full swing. But because of this decision the traders business has completely collapsed," he added.
Shah said the traders body had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the problems the traders were facing.

Meanwhile, FRTWA office bearer Biren Limbachiya sarcastically said that earlier there was the talk of bringing back the black money from abroad, but now people in the country are facing hardships.
"The trading community had helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi come to power, but now we (traders) are being harassed," he said.
As per the data available, there are about 1,579 cooperative banks all over the country having 10,000 branches and close to 3,000 operational Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) across the nation.

There are about 370 District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) and over 93,000 Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) in the country.
According to the RBI data, 370 DCCBs have held deposits of Rs 2,36,890 crore as of 2014 while PACS have had Rs 81,900 crore deposits.
On November 8, Modi had announced the decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes.