Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said the banking sector has a crucial role to play in achieving its dream of becoming a developed nation, or Viksit Bharat, by 2047. She was speaking at the 90th Foundation Day of the Bank of Maharashtra, a public sector bank, where she underscored the sector’s responsibility in accelerating economic momentum in the way of critical initiatives.
“Banks will be at the epicenter of execution of the agenda set by the Prime Minister. It will be their contribution that will be pivotal in hastening the journey to realize this dream,” Sitharaman said.
She outlined several key areas where banks must lead. These include boosting infrastructure development, ensuring need-based financing for MSMEs, extending formal banking services to unbanked population and enhancing insurance penetration across the country.
Sitharaman also pointed out that the transformative nature of the impact of technology on the banking structure is ever-increasing. In this connection, even as she placed on record the Government’s emphasis on developing secure and user-friendly digital banking systems, she impressed the importance of banks acquiring strong measures to build robust cybersecurity systems to protect the kind of trust that would be placed in these systems.” Digital System should not be breached easily.” A breach would compromise not only the system but also the trust in it. Banks must ensure they have strong firewalls and regularly conduct emergency drills to handle potential digital security incidents,” she said.
The Finance Minister then proceeded to state the increasing worldwide adoption of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which processed 45 percent of the total real-time digital payments across the world. UPI is now live in seven countries. The Indian banking industry, like the Sitharaman comments, reiterated its strategic position for furthering the national economic agenda while at the same time focusing on the aspects of innovation, security, and inclusiveness as India moves toward its vision in 2047.
