Rupee for dollar.

"India will use the G20 platform to push international settlement in rupees, especially with countries that are facing currency issues, Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said." Mint. "India is taking steps to promote the use of its currency for international trade as part of a push to boost its exports in countries that are grappling with a shortage of dollars or hit with Western sanctions." VOA. "India has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates that will allow it to settle trade in rupees instead of dollars, boosting India's efforts to cut transaction costs by eliminating dollar conversions." Reuters. "India and Malaysia can now use the Indian rupee to settle trade in addition to other currencies, the Ministry of External Affairs said." BT. "Several banks including HDFC Bank and UCO Bank, have opened as many as 30 special vostro accounts ...to facilitate overseas trade in the rupee, a top government official said." ET. So, is it bye-bye US dollar? Not quite. "Russia has accumulated billions of rupees in Indian banks which it can't use, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said...pointing to a ballooning surplus with the South Asian nation." ET. Now, "Indian refiners have settled some payments for Russian oil imports in Chinese yuan, but the US dollar remains the dominant currency for such payments, a senior government official said." Reuters. Russia prefers the Chinese yuan to the Indian rupee because it imported $67.7 billion worth of goods from China in 2021, oec.world, even though the yuan has fallen more than 4% against the dollar this year. Reuters. "Given frosty ties between Beijing and New Delhi, it's a national embarrassment of sorts," wrote Andy Mukherjee. "Close to home, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka should be relatively easy to persuade. Since they run a combined $15 billion annual trade deficit with India, their banks will face the opposite of the problem the Russian institutions encountered." "The basic problem is that India had a surplus with only two of its top 15 trading partners last year: the US and the UK. They will be the last to accept rupee payments." ET. "The country's merchandise exports fell 22 percent to $32.97 billion in June from $42.28 billion a year earlier." ET. And, "India's foreign exchange reserves rose for a third straight week to total $609.02 billion as of July 14," as "They rose by $ 12.74 billion from the week earlier - the biggest gain in four months - having risen by a total of $3.08 billion in the prior two weeks." Reuters. So, why doesn't the government allow free flow of the rupee? "While the 'internationalisation' of the rupee may lower transaction costs of cross-border trade and investment operations by mitigating exchange rate risk, it will lead to complications in terms of formulating of monetary policy," wrote Vaishali Basu Sharma. "In addition to sophisticated financial markets, the most important pre-requisite of 'internationalisation' of currency is price stability." Exactly. It means that the RBI cannot keep the interest rate low to lower government borrowing cost while tolerating high inflation to increase tax collections. Can't expect others to accept the rupee while you are undermining its value. What do they say about having your cake (wikipedia)?