‘Would not look at UPI as monopoly’: RBI guv Shaktikanta Das on digital and cryptocurrency

16 views 10:18 am 0 Comments January 11, 2024

“I don’t think the world or emerging markets can take a crypto mania like the Tulip mania,” RBI guv Shaktikanta Das said.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das delivered a keynote address on Thursday at the Mint BFSI Summit in Mumbai.
Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das (YouTube/RBI)

Here are the top quotes from the RBI governor from the banking, financial services, and insurance summit.
  • All key indicators of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs), namely, capital adequacy, asset quality, and profitability, have improved in the last four years… The Indian financial sector has emerged better than when we entered the period of massive difficulties. India’s banking sector has emerged more vital in the unprecedented challenges. How was this achieved? All the stakeholders did excellent work.
  • In the aftermath of the Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) crisis, the Reserve Bank heightened its focus on maintaining and fostering macro-financial stability through conventional and non-conventional measures. The flexibility in the Flexible Inflation Targeting (FIT) framework of maintaining price stability while considering the growth objective helped us accommodate large supply-side shocks while focusing on immediate growth concerns during the pandemic.
  • I would not look at UPI as a monopoly. InuUPI’s successful access to UPI also owes a lot to the private sector payment players. The private sector companies have had a significant role. He said UPI is perhaps the best in the world and should become a world leader.
  • In recent years, the Reserve Bank has undertaken a complete overhaul of the regulatory architecture of the banking system. These regulatory steps include, among other things, the implementation of the leverage ratio (June 2019; extensive exposures framework (June 2019); guidelines on the appointment of directors and constitution of committees of the board (April 2021); revised guidelines on securitization of standard assets and transfer of loan exposures.
  • Post-pandemic digital lending has exponentially increased in various emerging economies, including India. There has been an increase in the scale and velocity of digital credit. At the same time, it has raised a host of business conduct issues.
  • The RBI’s position on cryptocurrency remains unchanged. Traveling down that path will create huge risks. I don’t think the world or emerging markets (EMs) can take a crypto mania like the Tulip mania.
  • We are expanding wholesale CBDC and exploring the potential for programmable features in retail CBDC to enable senders to define specific end uses.