Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad today exhorted people, especially businessmen, to adopt and promote digital transactions for the country's economic development.
Advocating for "cashless, less-cash and digital payments", Prasad, who is also Law and Justice Minister, distributed Point of Sale (POS) machines among the businessmen and traders here at a function to promote and popularise the use of digital transactions/payments.
"It is not about 'cashless' rather the government stresses 'less' on cash. Our emphasis is to promote digital mode of payments," Prasad said at a function here.
He was addressing a gathering of businessmen and traders at a 'Go Cashless Awareness Programme' organised by the Electronics and Information Technology Ministry at Khajekalan in the state capital.
The minister, who along with Bihar BJP chief Nityanand Rai, made digital payment for having tea at Bablu Gupta's tea stall at Khajekalan area in Patna city after the function, also showed people how easy is digital transaction.
While addressing people, Prasad said, "The drive for digital payment would make India a stronger country. It would broaden the ambit of tax net...Demonetisation is a surgical strike on black money and aims to wipe out corruption. The decision would ultimately help honest people."
He said, "It is not only easy to make or accept digital payments but it would also keep record of the transactions a businessmen had in a day or month and on that basis, he/she may get loans from banks easily."
A person can make payments using his/her cards, mobile phones and Aadhaar today given the fact that there are 105 crore mobile phones, 109 crore Aadhaar cards, 50 crore internet connections, 35 crore smart phones.
He made it clear to the businessmen that government agencies would not go after the transactions that they had carried out prior to November 8.
Prasad was accompanied by Bihar BJP chief Nityanand Rai,
senior party leader and Patna Saheb MLA Nand Kishore Yadav, legislators Arun Kumar Sinha and Nitin Navin.
Stating that there are two lakh Common Service Centres (CSC) across the country, most of which are in rural areas, the minister said that these centres help people in getting Aadhaar card, railway tickets, depositing electricity bills, filling up of examination forms etc.
People would be able to make digital payments for their needs/payments through CSCs, he added.
The minister announced that the one crore people and 25 lakh businessmen would be provided training for making digital transactions/payments across the country.
Out of the set target, 1.73 lakh shopowners and 63 lakh people have already been provided training within 10 days of the start of the training programme, he said, adding that out of this, 2.55 lakh people and 12,903 shopowners have been trained for digital transactions in Bihar, Prasad said.
The minister also distributed POS machines among businessmen and traders in Bakhtiyarpur later in the day.
