Reacting on the latest reports on black economy, Arun Kumar, a former economics professor at Jawahar Lal University (JNU), said that going by these estimations, black income in the country for the current year can be estimated at Rs 144 lakh crore.

On the other hand, the NIFM study puts the black money outflows from the country at 10% of the estimated black money or unaccounted income at Rs 9.4 lakh crore ($216 billion) during 1990-2008. Black wealth outside the country was 0.2-7.4% of the GDP during 1997-2009, the NIPFP said in its report which didn't estimate the amount. NCAER has estimated the unaccounted wealth (stock) at 2.8% of the total unaccounted wealth at around Rs 22 lakh crore ($384-490 billion) during 1980-2010. An increase in the size of the shadow economy will, therefore, increase the demand for currency. The monetary approach is based on the assumption that cash is used to make transactions to avoid detection for tax authority. MIMIC or the multiple indicators multiple causes model used widely for estimating black money uses direct tax rates, the regulatory tax burden and per capita income levels as observed variables. The tax-related unaccounted income during 2010-2011 was estimated at 65.34% while non-tax corruption related black income was at 19.57%, as per NCAER. The NIPFP and NIFM studies use the MIMIC method to arrive at the black money estimates, whereas the NCAER makes use of the monetary method to arrive at the black money figures. The third study by NIFM, however, puts the black economy estimate at a distant 10% of GDP.

Another study on unaccounted income as a percentage of GDP done by NCAER shows that the level of black money in the economy was in the range of 71% to 79% of the GDP during 2010-2011.

Black economy india arun kumar pdf