The chief general manager in RBI's Foreign Exchange Department N Senthil Kumar has said that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is working on providing various avenues for the usage of Indian rupee (INR) accumulated by the Russian trade counterparts. He added that the RBI is eyeing to provide avenues to either settle INRs of Russian trade counterparts for settling their imports or making capital investments in India.

He noted that both countries have focused on local currencies to settle bilateral trade and reduce reliance on the US Dollar for the past few years. Last year, the RBI was allowed to invest surplus balances in government securities. He added that there should be some amount of trust which should come for exporters or importers to use local currencies, which will help in increasing the level of transactions which happen in INR.

Moreover, he has encouraged the increase of INR-Rouble transactions, pointing necessity of doing such transaction to help market evolve. He emphasized that there is a lot of interest in doing INR-Rouble transactions.