News Hour- India's forex reserves rose by $2 billion in the week to June 15: RBI

KOLKATA: India's foreign exchange reserves rose by $2 billion to 289.396 billion in the week to June 15 amid intense pressure on rupee vis-a-vis dollar on strong import demand for the greenback. 

Forex reserves however dipped by $5 billion since April as Reserve Bank of India had to sell dollars to curb volatility in the forex market. The rupee fell nearly 13% since March 31 as risk averse foreign portfolio investors withdrew their money from local capital markets while inflows remained low. 

Although Indians working abroad are bringing in dollars for investing in local bank deposits to take advantage of the weakening rupee and high interest rates, the net inflow proved to be inadequate to stem rupee's weakness. 

Foreign currency assets rose by $1.933 billion to $256.527 billion for the week, the central bank said in its weekly statistical report released Friday. 

RBI said foreign currency assets expressed in US dollar terms include the effect of depreciation of non-US currencies such as euro, sterling and yen held in reserves. 

Official data revealed that the country's reserve position in the International Monetary Fund rose $58.3 million to $2.899 billion and special drawing rights (SDR) rose $25.7 million to $4.386 billion while valuation of gold reserves remained unchanged at $25,585 billion.
(Source- http://economictimes.indiatimes.com)