The Union Minister arrived in Washington this morning on an official visit to attend the World Bank Spring Meeting, the G20 Finance Ministers’ Meeting and the Central Bank Governors Meeting (FMCBG).
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said that amid the pioneering fintech revolution, the biggest risk of cryptocurrencies could be its use for money laundering and terror financing. In her address at a symposium during the ongoing spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Sitharaman said: “I think the biggest risk for all countries across the board will be the money laundering aspect and also the currency aspect being used. Terrorism is being financed.” “I think regulation using technology is the only answer. Regulation using technology has to be efficient enough, that it’s not behind the curve, but make sure it’s on top of it. And that’s not possible If any one country thinks it can handle it. It should be across the board,” the minister said.
The Union Minister arrived in Washington this morning on an official visit to attend the Spring Meetings at the World Bank, the G20 Finance Ministers’ Meeting and the Central Bank Governors Meeting (FMCBG). During the first day of the visit, the Finance Minister participated in a high level panel discussion on “Money at a Crossroads” organized by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. “How fast, how far and in what proportion are we at a crossroads, but I see this as a one-way street in which digital money is going to play a big role,” the IMF chief said in his opening remarks.
Sitharaman highlighted India’s performance in the digital world and the government’s efforts to build digital infrastructure infrastructure over the past decade, emphasizing on the increase in the rate of digital adoption in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. “If I use the 2019 data, the digital adoption rate in India is around 85 per cent. But globally in the same year it was only close to 64 per cent. So the time of the pandemic really made us test and ourselves. Helped to prove that it is simple to use, common people can use it, and adoption was indeed proven,” Sitharaman emphasized.
Apart from her official engagements with the World Bank, the IMF, the G20 and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Sitharaman on Monday also attended an event of the Atlantic Council, a Washington DC-based think tank. A finance ministry statement said the visit will also include a number of bilateral interactions, including a high-level meeting with Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and South Africa as well as a high-level meeting with World Bank President David Malpass. Notably, after the meeting ends in Washington, Sitharaman will visit San Francisco on April 24, where she will interact with business leaders and also interact with Stanford University faculty and students. She will leave for India on April 27.
(ANI inputs)
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