India’s forex reserves jump to $631.92 billion, not far from all-time high
India’s forex reserves rose by $394 million to $631.92 billion for the week ended March 4, not far from an all-time high of $642.453 billion, according to Reserve Bank data released on Friday.
During the week ended March 4, weekly data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed that the increase in reserves was due to an increase in foreign currency assets (FCA), which is a significant component of the overall reserves. .
Expressed in dollar terms, foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US units such as the euro, pound and yen held in foreign exchange reserves.
It touched an all-time high of $642.453 billion in the week ended September 3, 2021.
FCA rose by $634 million to $565.466 billion in the week ended March 4.
India’s reserves of over $600 billion should help it fight market volatility from the current Russia-Ukraine crisis.
But analysts and traders warned of a slowing economy and an expanding fiscal deficit still making it particularly vulnerable to capital flight, as evidenced by a decline of $631.527 billion from $1.425 billion in the previous week ended February 25. is reflected in.
Asia’s third-largest economy has terrifying memories of previous attempts by the Federal Reserve to do away with crisis-mode policies, especially in 2013 when talk of mere “diluted” stimulus pushed the rupee to a record low.
Now, with the Fed again rising thoughts about when it will need to ease stimulus, India’s rupee is under pressure, making a U-turn and weakening more than 0.4% to end at 76.61, 0.2 After touching the percentage to 76.27. Open trading on Friday.
The data also shows that gold reserves declined by $147 million to $42.32 billion in the week ended March 4.
The Special Drawing Rights (SDR) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined by $59 million to $18.981 billion. RBI said that the country’s reserve position with the IMF has come down by $ 34 million to $ 5.153 billion.