BHUBANESWAR: Union Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said the Reserve Bank of India’s new data centre in Odisha will house mission-critical financial systems, including the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) platforms, strengthening the country’s digital financial infrastructure and resilience.
Addressing the gathering after inauguration of the RBI Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sitharaman highlighted the growing importance of secure digital infrastructure in maintaining financial stability and supporting sustained economic growth.
The accompanying training institute, equipped with a research wing, will develop expertise in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, she said.
“A data centre is the vault in the digital age,” Sitharaman said and highlighed the strategic importance of secure and resilient infrastructure in safeguarding financial stability and supporting sustained economic growth.
The Finance minister said the new RBI campus in Odisha reflected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Purvodaya - accelerating the development of eastern India as a pathway to Sarvodaya, or the progress and prosperity of the entire country. “Under the guidance of the prime minister, we will ensure his vision of Purvodaya becomes Sarvodaya. When the East rises, its light reaches all of India,” she said.
On the transformation of India’s financial sector through technology and financial inclusion, Sitharaman said the Jan Dhan initiative launched in 2014 had brought more than 59 crore people into the formal banking system. “The accounts have no minimum balance requirement or annual charges while direct benefit transfers through them have helped eliminate leakages in welfare payments,” she said.
Under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, more than Rs 43 lakh crore has been sanctioned through over 60 crore collateral-free loans to micro and small enterprises with women accounting for 65 per cent of beneficiaries. Many borrowers have repaid their loans and subsequently accessed higher credit to expand their businesses, the Union minister said.
Under the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme, 1.2 crore loans have been sanctioned to street vendors, many of whom have repaid their loans and secured larger amounts for further business expansion.
Sitharaman said the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) had emerged as the world’s largest real-time payment system with transaction volumes growing nearly 13,000-fold since 2016-17. The platform now processes around 2,400 crore transactions a month or nearly 80 crore a day, she said.
The government granted infrastructure status to data centres in 2022, while the Union budget for 2026-27 announced a tax holiday for foreign companies providing global cloud services through data centres in India, the Finance minister added.
RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra reiterated the central bank’s commitment to leveraging emerging technologies, strengthening cybersecurity and developing indigenous technological capabilities to support India’s development ambitions.