Banking & Finance

Bhutan

• Ground Earth Station of the South Asia Satellite (SAS) in Thimphu was established under the space cooperation between India-Bhutan.
• Fin-tech is another new domain of collaboration between India and Bhutan. The RuPay Card was launched in Bhutan to enable acceptance of payments in Bhutan using RuPay cards issued by Indian banks and vice-versa thereby enabling the full inter-operability of the flagship digital project. This is meant to benefit Indian visitors in Bhutan and Bhutanese citizens who travel and transit to India for education, tourism and work. 
• In 2021, India’s Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) application was launched in Bhutan with the objective of promoting cashless payments between the two nations.
• In November 2022, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) signed an agreement with the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan (RMA) for providing an additional currency swap support to the RMA of up to USD 200 million equivalent in INR (approximately INR 1657 crore). This support is in addition to the extant currency swap support of USD 200 million INR equivalent extended by the RBI. The swap agreement between the RBI and the RMA is intended to provide a backstop line of funding for RMA for short-term foreign exchange liquidity requirements or to meet any balance of payments and liquidity crises. This facility will also help to promote trade and investment between the two countries.