Rupee-rouble settlement volume up seven times from 2022: Sberbank
Reserve Bank of India announced new steps for rupee-settled global trades, Russian banking major Sberbank said it has seen an uptick in volumes for rupee-rouble payments for Moscow’s imports, with the lender focusing on drawing more foreign clients to the domestic market.
“Sberbank offers its corporate clients a convenient way of carrying out settlements in rupees and roubles. Sberbank has now become the main channel for such payments on Russian import operations, with volumes up by seven times last year compared to 2022. More and more companies are taking advantage of it, recognising the attractions of this means of payment,” Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, said exclusively to ET.
In July 2022, the RBI said that it would put in place an additional arrangement for invoicing, payment and settlement of exports and imports in rupees. The step, taken in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, was aimed at supporting the increasing interest of global trading in rupees, the central bank said.
India’s oil purchases from Russia jumped after the war as New Delhi purchased discounted crude. The share of Russian oil in India’s total imports rose to 35% in 2023-24 from 23% in the previous year, according to energy cargo tracker Vortexa.
While rupee-rouble trades have faced significant hurdles over the past year — with reports saying such transactions had either stalled or turned towards other currency pairs — Popov said that more and more Russian importers were looking towards goods and services
