Banning cryptocurrencies outright not an option: CII’s Sanjiv Bajaj

Innovations like cryptocurrency need to be monitored and regulated rather than banning them outright, says Sanjiv Bajaj, president, CII. “It needs to be tested out in a project mode in a sandbox environment rather than banned outright. There are a lot of learnings that can come. There can be some harmful sides. That’s why you need to monitor and regulate,” he says.

The top officials of RBI recently told a parliamentary panel that crypto might lead to “dollarisation” of a portion of the Indian economy and it would be detrimental to national interests. In the last union budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a 30% tax on trading in cryptocurrencies and related assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Bajaj says there are a lot of innovations happening in the digital space. “The world is going ahead with it. We cannot put our heads like an ostrich in the sand and believe that it’s not happening. We must keep our eyes open,” he says.