| Date: |
20-02-2016 |
| Subject: |
India's forex reserves rise $4.6 billion in last four weeks |
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KOLKATA: India's foreign exchange reserves rose $4.624 billion in the last four weeks bringing much relief to the local authorities amid fear of global economic slowdown and flight of capital from emerging countries to safer destinations.
Reserves rose $347 million in the week to February 12 to $351.832 billion, Reserve Bank of India said in its weekly statistical report.
RBI does not cite any reason behind the rise or fall of reserves. But market watchers said that the rise in valuation of reserves held in other global currencies such as euro, pound sterling and yen helped offsetting the outflows.
In fact, foreign equity outflows drove the rupee back towards two-year lows. The local currency closed Friday at 68.80 a dollar.
Foreign currency assets, which reflects the value of reserves in other global currencies, rose $1.581 billion to $330.020 billion.
The rupee crossed the 68 level a dollar on January 20 amid fear of a major slowdown in China coupled a major global economic slowdown. This level of was last seen in 2013 when the news of the tapering of quantitative easing programme of the US Federal Reserve rocked all markets.
China has lost $612 billion (16 per cent) of its reserves over the past 13 months - partly because of policy issues and partly due to currency revaluation effects (reserve holdings in euros and yen lost 20 per cent of their dollar value).
Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com
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