New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that the government and the Reserve Bank are actively engaged in improving the central bank digital currency (CBDC) so that it can be used for cross-border payments. RBI started the wholesale CBDC pilot project and brought together nine banks — State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, YES Bank, IDFC First Bank, and HSBC. Moreover, RBI has already launched a pilot in the retail version of CBDC or the e-rupee on December 1, 2022. The e-rupee is in the form of a digital token that represents legal tender.
It is issued in the same values as the paper currency and coins. It is distributed through financial intermediaries, so banks. Users can transact with e-rupee through a digital wallet offered by the participating banks.
“We strongly believe that it helps in cross-border payments. It will bring greater transparency and traceability…,” Sitharaman said while speaking at an event to mark 125 years of Hindu College.
It helps speed up payments with less cost, she said, adding that it lowers cost for internal and external remittance.
“Both the regulator and the government are working on it. We are actively engaged in it,” she said.
Asked about priority sectors to make India a ‘Viksit Bharat’, she said focus areas would be manufacturing and agriculture.
“Agriculture maintains its supremacy and we are looking at strengthening agriculture by modernizing some of the practices, post-harvest practices and so on,” she said.
In manufacturing, she said, the government has identified 13 sunrise sectors including renewable energy, semiconductor, machine learning, earth sciences and space.