AT A TIME when India is grappling with rising trade frictions with the US and President Donald Trump’s sharp rhetoric against a BRICS currency, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday unveiled a series of measures to deepen the financial markets, allow banks a greater role in corporate consolidation, and crucially, take steps towards internationalising the rupee.

The package includes two breakthrough decisions. First, banks will be allowed to finance corporate takeovers — a domain from which they were long barred. Second, Indian banks and their overseas branches can begin extending rupee-denominated loans to residents of neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Both steps mark a strategic shift in how the RBI envisions India’s financial system: no longer inwar

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