Nirmala Sitharaman said the rupee is not sliding but the dollar is incessantly strengthening.
Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister, made a statement regarding the performance of the rupee and said she would not interpret it as the rupee weakening but rather as the dollar gaining. Sitharaman, who recently attended 24 bilateral meetings while on an official visit to the United States, responded to a query from the news agency ANI.
“Dollar is strengthening incessantly. So obviously, all other currencies are performing against the strengthening dollar. I am not talking about technicalities but it is a matter of fact India’s rupee probably has withstood this dollar rate going up…I think the Indian rupee has performed much better than many other emerging market currencies.”
“But I think the efforts by the RBI are more towards seeing that there is not too much of volatility. It is not to intervene in the market to fix the value of the rupee. So containing volatility is the only exercise RBI is involved in,” the finance minister said. “I have said this before that rupee will find its own level,” the minister said.
The rupee fell to an all-time low of 82.68 against the US dollar during early trade on Monday this week.
Speaking about India’s Presidency of G20, she said, “We are taking Presidentship at a time when there are a lot of challenges, we will have to work together with the membership to see how best we can navigate the whole thing.”
“We want to bring up matters related to cryptocurrency on the table of G20 so that members can discuss it and arrive at a framework or SOP globally,” Sitharaman said.
Speaking of India’s recent recognition from the IMF for its digital accomplishments, the finance minister stated that many G20 members advised that India should highlight its digital achievements, such as Aadhaar, etc. “Even during my meeting with the World Bank president today, he himself said that we should showcase how common people have accepted the deepening of digital applications in India. Also said he will be happy to work together with India to take it to other parts of the world,” Nirmala Sitharaman said.
