India To Press For Automatic Sharing Of Banking Data At G-20

NEW DELHI  (NNN-Bernama) -- Taking the fight against black money to global level, India will impress upon the G-20 nations to persuade tax havens to do away with their secrecy laws and adopt mechanism for automatic sharing of

taxation and banking data.

Besides, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is leading the Indian delegation at the two-day ministerial meeting in Paris beginning Friday, will also pitch for an effective regulatory regime to deal with volatile global commodity prices, reports Press Trust of India (PTI).

"It has been emphasised at the London Summit of G-20 (in 2009) that days of banking secrecy were over ... However, some countries are still maintaining that they cannot share data retrospectively," said a senior official accompanying the

minister.

Mukherjee, the official said on board Special Aircraft, would emphatically raise the issue of sharing of banking and tax-related information during his interventions at the ministerial meeting of G-20, a club of rich and developing nations accounting for 85 per cent of global output and two thirds of the world's population.

India, the official said, wants the countries to adopt mechanism for automatic exchange of information "irrespective of whether it relates to tax evasion, tax avoidance or tax fraud ... and also ensure recovery of assets stashed abroad."

Regretting that the issue of black money has not been taken up "aggressively" by the G-20 members, the official said India would impress upon other members to devote sufficient space on the issue in the communique, which would be issued at the end of the two-day ministerial meeting.

The ministerial meeting will be followed by a summit of G-20 leaders at Cannes on November 3-4, which among others, would be attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

India, the official said, will also be taking up the issue of volatility of global commodity prices and impress upon the need for better regulation of the commodity markets.

"The volatility in global commodity prices is on account of monetisation and not due to demand-supply mismatch as is being advocated by some developed countries," the official said.

The volatility in commodity prices can be attributed to large injection of funds by developed countries to combat the impact of the slowdown.

Among other important issues, the official said the issue of Tobin Tax (a tax on cross-border financial transactions) is likely to come up for discussion at the ministerial meeting.

Initially, he added, several countries have opposed the financial transaction tax "but now there seems to be some rethinking on the issue."

The issue of Tobin Tax had come up for discussion at the Toronto summit last year. It has assumed significance in view of the need to control the disruptive cross-border capital flows.

"We can address the global financial problems either by having strong regulations or by adopting light regulations backed by financial transaction tax," he said, adding global leaders are yet to reach any consensus on the issue. -- NNN-BERNAMA