FM flags terror, laundering; seeks crypto regulation

WASHINGTON: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday made a strong case for regulating cryprocurrencies at a global level to mitigate the risk of money laundering and terror funding.

Participating at a high-level panel discussion organised by the IMF, the Finance Minister said that as long as the non-governmental activity of the crypto assets was through unhosted wallets, the regulation was going to be very difficult. However, she said, cross border payments between countries will become very effective through Central Bank-driven digital currencies.

“The risk which worries me more on the non-governmental domain is essentially you’re looking at unhosted wallets across the borders, across the globe... So, regulation cannot be done by a single country within its terrain through some effective method and for doing it across the borders, technology doesn’t have a solution which will be acceptable to various sovereigns at the same time applicable within each of the territory,” she said. “I harp on that very much because I think the biggest risk for all countries across the board will be on the money laundering aspect, and also on the aspect of currency being used for financing terror,” she said.

Meanwhile, IMF projected a “fairly robust” growth of 8.2% for India in 2022, making it the fastest-growing major economy in the world, almost twice faster than China’s 4.4%, the World Economic Outlook report stated.