India wants to push rupee trade to help forex-starved nations: Sitharaman

India wants to promote trade settlements in rupee to help partner countries facing a shortage of hard currencies so that they continue importing essential goods, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.

When countries struggling to access hard currencies often face difficulties in maintaining trade despite their need to import goods, and local currency settlements could help address the problem, she said in an interaction with the Atlantic Council on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank annual meetings at Bangkok, Thailand.

"One of the things that we in India want to do is to settle in rupee, whatever the payment is got to be done by those countries which import goods from us," she said.

She said India was working towards facilitating rupee and local currency settlements to ensure that trade continued with countries facing foreign currency constraints.

"Rupee and local currency settlements are something which we want to do for the benefit of countries which are starved of