RBI to soon issue guidelines to banks for resolution of certain rupee trade issues: Official

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will soon issue guidelines for banks for the resolution of certain issues being faced by exporters while undertaking rupee trade with other countries, a senior government official said on Friday.

The official said that as far as the rupee trading mechanism is concerned, initially there were some teething troubles but in many of these areas the transactions have started.

Some exporters had approached the commerce ministry that there are some issues with regard to generation of e-BRC (electronic bank realisation certificate).

”So we have taken this issue with the RBI. So the RBI is in the process of issuing a detailed SOP (standard operating procedure) to all the banks so that e-BRC generation becomes smooth. That SOP has been vetted by us and the RBI should be releasing it in the next 2-3 days,” the official said. However, the official added that the limitation with rupee trade is that it can only work as a barter currency.

Due to trade in the defence sector, Russia has accumulated a lot of rupee reserves.

”With Russia, because we have difference in trade, lot of rupee have got accumulated in Russia,” the official said adding there is no bar on making payment in euro or dirham or yuan or dollar. The government is encouraging rupee trade with other partner countries to reduce dependency on the dollar.