Banks to play major role in making India developed nation: FM Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said banking sector will have to play a crucial role in driving nda of making India a developed nation or Viksit Bharat by 2047.

Finance Minister was speaking at an event here to mark 90th Foundation Day of Bank of Maharashtra , a public sector lender.

"Banks will have to play a crucial role in driving nda set by Prime Minister and by your role, we are going to give greater momentum to achieving this dream," she said.

Sitharaman said banks will be required to give strong momentum to infrastructure sector, ensure availability of need-based funding to MSMEs, bring unbanked population under ambit of formal banking channels, and help increase insurance penetration.

She ted that techlogy is changing banking landscape as it provides a secure and easy-to-navigate digital banking experience to all customers.

However, she ded that "you (banks) cant have a digital system which somewhere gets hacked, and entire system and trust which is laid on it getting compromised. So you need to have a robust and resilient system for which every w and n you need to make sure that firewalls are equate, any emergency drill which you need to do, what if situation so you kw to handle if re is an emergency in terms of digital insecure incidents".

minister also highlighted rising popularity of UPI in driving digital payments, saying 45 per cent of all real-time digital payments globally take place in India.

UPI is operational in seven countries, she ded.