Russia’s VTB Bank will launch the facility of cross-border money transfer in Indian rupee (INR) by the end of this month, the state-backed banker said in a statement on Wednesday.
It noted that retail customers would be able to send money to both individual and legal entities in India.
VTB Bank advised in the statement that that transaction limit for the cross-border transfer would be 20 million Roubles (nearly $213,100). There would be one percent commission on every transaction.
The development follows assurances from VTB and other top bank Sberbank, both of which have said that they are involved in efforts to facilitate the conversion of INR into roubles to help Russian companies retrieve billions of rupees in Indian bank accounts.
Russian Banks Presence in India
Last July, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed foreign banks to open special INR “Vostro” accounts in Indian banks to facilitate trade in national currencies.
According to the commerce ministry, these banks include
VTB Bank;
Sberbank;
Gazprom.
Patel told the Parliament that New Delhi has taken several steps to overcome disruptions in India-Russia trade caused by western sanctions and due to disconnection of big Russian banks from the SWIFT network.
Bilateral trade between India and Russia hit an all-time high of $45 billion last year, helped by Russian crude exports to New Delhi. Moscow this year emerged as top supplier of crude to New Delhi, overtaking the south Asian nation’s traditional suppliers in the Middle-East as a top energy source.
In the first six months of 2023, India-Russia trade witnessed an year-on-year spike of 300 percent, making Russia one of top three trade partners of India for the first time.
'Welcome Development', Says Indian Group
Ashwani Mahajan, the co-convenor of Indian advocacy group Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), told Sputnik India that the expanding Russian bank operations was a "welcome development" as far as the ongoing push towards forging frameworks for trading in national currencies was concerned.
"Whenever there is a new framework, there are some technical and procedural delays. However, both India and Russia seem to be overcoming these difficulties now," stated Mahajan, who is also an economics professor at Delhi University.
He noted that the framework for the "rupee-rouble trade" was gradually falling in place.
Mahajan expressed confidence that the example of India-Russia cooperation would serve as a cue for other trading partners of India to expand their bilateral trade settlements in national currencies, particularly the INR.
The Indian Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) unveiled by the Indian Commerce Ministry this year stresses upon the need to "encourage" the trade in rupee to overcome disruptions caused by factors such as sanctions.
So far, the RBI has allowed banks from 18 countries to open vostro accounts in Indian banks to expand the use of national currencies in trade settlements, according to information provided by the Indian government to Parliament in March.