Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley addresses the media on note ban figures released by the Reserve Bank of India. Excerpts:

- People with inadequate understanding of how to tackle the black money problem were confusing the demonetisation exercise with how much money comes back into the banking system and how much doesn't. This was never the purpose of demonetisation.

- Currency confiscation was not the object of demonestisation.

- Object of demonetisation was that India is predominantly high cash economy therefore that scenario requires to be significantly altered.

- The primary objective of note ban was to reduce the volume cash transactions and expand the tax base. Both direct and indirect tax base have been expanded substantially.

- As per the RBI's report the volume of cash currency has come down by 17 per cent.

- The other major objective was to encourage formalisation and digitisation of the economy. The volume of digital transactions reached its peak during demonetisation.

- Detection of fake currency was another objective that was fulfilled.