Many countries interested in bilateral rupee trade: FM

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said many countries have evinced interest for bilateral trade in the rupee after the RBI announced a mechanism recently.Speaking at Mindmine Summit 2022, she said this along with other steps taken by the government is towards full capital account convertibility.”It isn’t the rouble-rupee which was in the old format. Now this (bilateral rupee trade) formulation, which I am glad the RBI has come up at a time which was so critical,” she said when asked if India is ready for capital account convertibility.Highlighting that many countries have evinced interest in trade in the rupee, she said, in a way it is opening the Indian economy more than what can be imagined.”Post-pandemic, India is coming up with so many out-of-the-box solutions…I would like to highlight the fact that we are a lot more open with the Indian economy, a lot more open in the way we are talking to countries, we are willing to have our digital platform become interoperable between countries to enable cross-border transactions,” she said.