India is in an advanced stage of dialogue on the expansion of rupee trade with several countries, said the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on March 13.
The Indian government has been pushing for international trade in rupee.
Goyal was speaking at the CII Partnership Summit 2023 in New Delhi. It was in July last year this year that the RBI had issued a circular saying it had decided “to put in place an additional arrangement for invoicing, payment, and settlement of exports/ imports in INR,” the minister said. The idea, the RBI said, was to “promote growth of global trade with emphasis on exports from India and to support the increasing interest of global trading community in INR,” he added.
The Finance Ministry had also met later in September with stakeholders including banks and the Ministries of External Affairs and Commerce to discuss ways to promote international trade in rupee instead of the United States dollar.
Currently, exports or imports by a company are always in a foreign currency, with exceptions such as Nepal and Bhutan.
“Our MSMEs are first engaging with digitalization and as was mentioned earlier, India is developing its digital promise in the form of digital public goods for the use of the rest of the world. Singapore and India have recently partnered on UPI and we hope to do the same with UAE in the near future,” Goyal said, adding that, “We are expanding rupee trade with several countries, many of which are at an advanced stage of dialogue and finalization.”
The Union minister stressed on the need to address challenges of tariff and non-tariff barriers, which can hamper trade between countries. “There are so many non- tariff barriers, it is imperative nations look at this,” he said. He also urged countries to stop this practice and work towards a more liberalised and open trading system.
He called upon the countries to find collective solutions to global challenges, which are need of the hour. Goyal stressed that low-income and developing countries need to be funded to address the challenge of climate change. He called for the promotion of flexible, tailor-made environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks to achieve these goals.
