RBI Governor asks CCIL to create infra for currency trades beyond USD-INR

Given the "broader objective" of rupee internationalisation, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra on Friday asked CCIL to create infrastructure for facilitate in currency pairs beyond USD and the domestic currency.

Speaking at an event to mark the 25th anniversary of Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL) late on Friday evening, Malhotra also asked the entity to enhance its retail investors-focused offerings on the forex and government securities front.

"Given the broader objective of internationalisation of INR, CCIL could explore the possibility of putting in place necessary infrastructure to facilitate trading and settlement services of currency pairs beyond the USD-INR," Malhotra said.


For the past few years, internationalisation of the rupee has been a concerted policy agenda and India has signed up agreements with a few countries to settle bilateral trade in local currencies.

Malhotra urged the CCIL to continuously explore and enhance its product and service offerings on the Forex Retail and the RBI Retail Direct, which will ensure a seamless customer experience and robust system capabilities.

He said there are 3 lakh retail investors enlisted with the g-sec trading platform.

The governor also said India is the only major economy where government securities and repo transactions are traded on an anonymous electronic trading platform with near real-time dissemination of trade information and are settled efficiently through a central counterparty.

"Our trade repository was set up well before the G20 actually recommended reporting of over the counter derivative trades," he added.

Stating that the CCIL is a risk management company and a tech company rolled into one, Malhotra asked the 2001-started body to embrace innovation and leverage emerging technologies to increase efficiency, scalability, performance, security and reduce costs.

He said stability, growth and trust are important for the RBI as well.