Bhubaneswar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday inaugurated the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) new Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, marking a significant addition to the country’s infrastructure for digital banking and financial security.
The facilities are designed to strengthen the security, resilience and capacity of the RBI’s critical financial systems, including payment and settlement services. The data centre will support mission-critical systems such as Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), which facilitate large-value and retail fund transfers.Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra and other dignitaries attended the inauguration.
Speaking at the event, Sitharaman said the new campus would expand India’s domestic capacity for critical payment infrastructure. She noted that the Union government had granted infrastructure status to data centres in 2022 and announced a tax holiday in the Union Budget 2026-27 for foreign companies providing global cloud services from data centres in India.
Malhotra said the new facility would enhance the capacity, resilience and security of the RBI’s critical systems, adding that cybersecurity was essential to maintaining public trust in digital banking.
He said the RBI had put in place frameworks covering information technology governance, cyber resilience, outsourcing, third-party risks and digital payment security. The central bank was also using data analytics and supervisory technology to identify risks at an early stage.
The Cybersecurity Training Institute will help build skills among RBI officials and professionals across the banking and financial sector in areas such as cybersecurity, data science, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Addressing the gathering, Modi described the inauguration as a step towards strengthening India’s institutional and technological capabilities. He said the government’s approach to development focused on expanding opportunities across cities, towns and villages and ensuring that the benefits reached the last person.
The Prime Minister highlighted improvements in digital connectivity, healthcare and infrastructure, saying the government had sought to address disparities that left smaller towns, remote regions and villages without basic amenities.
Turning to banking, Modi said digital infrastructure had expanded access to financial services for sections of society that had historically remained outside the formal banking system.
He contrasted the growth of digital banking with what he described as “phone banking” before 2014, alleging that influential individuals with political connections had secured large loans while ordinary citizens struggled to access banking services. He also linked past banking mismanagement to the accumulation of non-performing assets (NPAs).
Modi credited the Digital India ecosystem and financial inclusion initiatives with widening access to banking. He said nearly 59 to 60 crore accounts had been opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.
He also cited the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, PM SVANidhi and PM Vishwakarma schemes, saying they had helped entrepreneurs, street vendors and traditional artisans access formal credit. Self-help groups comprising 10 crore rural women had also received financial assistance, he said.
The Prime Minister further highlighted social security initiatives, including the Atal Pension Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, as part of efforts to expand financial protection.
Sitharaman also pointed to the expansion of India’s digital payments ecosystem, describing the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as the world’s largest real-time payment system.
She said UPI’s annual transaction volume had grown around 13,000 times since 2016-17, with more than 2,400 crore transactions recorded in a single month, or nearly 80 crore transactions a day.
The inauguration of the data centre and training institute adds to the RBI’s institutional infrastructure in Odisha and is intended to support the security and reliability of India’s increasingly technology-driven financial system.
(With inputs from agencies)