New Delhi: Ahead of the Union Budget, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that the government is close to reaching saturation in implementing social sector schemes designed to provide basic necessities to the poor. Apart from all the social sector schemes, she also focussed on other areas like manufacturing and agriculture sector in the country. The move of the government aims to become a self-reliant India.
Addressing the students of Hindu College on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, she said that both the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are actively engaged in improving the central bank digital currency (CBDC) so that it can be used for cross-border payments. “The time has come for India to become economically ‘aatmanirbhar’ (self-reliant), and march forward to become a developed nation by 2047,” said the finance minister.
The RBI began the pilot project wholesale CBDC and picked up 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. Besides, the central bank has already rolled out a pilot in the retail version of CBDC or e-rupee on December 1, 2022. The e-rupee is in the form of a digital token that represents legal tender.
As far as digital currency is concerned, it is being issued in the same denominations as the paper currency and coins. It is being distributed through financial intermediaries, ie; banks. Users are able to transact with e-rupee through a digital wallet offered by the participating banks. “We strongly believe it helps in cross border payments. It will bring in greater transparency and traceability,” Sitharaman said at the event.
When asked about priority sectors to make India ‘Viksit Bharat’, she said, the focus areas would be manufacturing and agriculture. “Agriculture retains its primacy and we are looking at strengthening agriculture by modernising some of the practices, post harvest practices and so on,” she said, adding that in manufacturing, the government had identified 13 sunrise sectors including renewable energy, semiconductor, machine learning, earth sciences and space
