The State Bank of India on Thursday said that it is opening special rupee vostro account to handle Russia-related trade settlements but is not the “nodal bank” for such business as reported by a section of the media.

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The Reserve Bank of India had issued a circular on July 11 that authorised all the banks in India, including SBI, to open special rupee accounts to promote invoicing in the local currency.

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The SBI said it is “making necessary arrangements and processing requests received from various banks, including Russian banks, duly following RBI guidelines” and its own policies and procedures.