The Outgoing governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) revealed his vision to drive India’s economy forward with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).
Shaktikanta Das in his farewell speech reflected on the Six years of efforts under his watch to leverage new technologies like CBDC, as well as the goals achieved and challenges facing the banking sector in India.
Some of the goals highlighted by Mr. Das include setting up an RBI innovation hub at Bengaluru, the center of India’s high-tech industry, and facilitating a regulatory sandbox for fintech innovation.
Mr Das highlighted RBI’s pioneer status amongst its peers in setting up a CBDC framework and actually launching one.
“ CBDC again is another area where RBI among the central banks is a pioneer. Almost every central bank is talking about and experimenting with CBDC but the actual launching of a pilot project has been done by very few” Mr Das stated.
CBDC as the Future of Currency
The Outgoing governor revealed his projection on the future of CBDC and the role it is set to play in India’s economy. He said he believes that CBDCs are the future of currency and possess enormous potential that should be harnessed in Global finance.
The RBI launched the Digital Rupee on 1 Dec 2022 after its initial proposal in 2017. The Digital rupee is a tokenized digital version of the Indian Rupee, issued by the Reserve Bank of India as a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
On a closing note, Mr Das took to X to share his gratitude to those who helped make his six years of sojourn at the Reserve Bank of India seamless and worthwhile.
CBDC’s in Various Jurisdictions
New research by the US-based think tank, Atlantic Council, revealed that a whopping 134 countries are exploring adopting Central Bank Digital Currencies.
According to the latest figures, all G20 countries are looking to adopt CBDCs and are either in the initiation stage or the experimentation stage.
There has been a narrative that the countries that have launched CBDCs have seen low or no usage, but in the last months we have seen a real uptake,” the council’s Josh Lipsky explained to Reuters.
Mr Lipsky predicted that the People’s Bank of China will be close to a full launch a year from now.
