India’s foreign exchange reserves rose to by a whopping $14.72 billion to $544.715 billion in the week through Nov. 11, marking their biggest weekly jump in more than a year, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) weekly statistical supplement showed.
Asia’s third-largest economy’s reserves stood at $529.99 billion by Nov. 4. The rise in the foreign exchange reserves was likely fueled by a jump in the Foreign Currency Assets (FCA), which is a major component of the overall reserves. Foreign currency assets rose $11.8 billion to $482.53 billion for the week ending Nov 11. Gold reserves rose $2.64 billion to $39.70 billion.
The foreign exchange reserves are still down from around $630 billion at the start of 2022 as the RBI sold a portion of the reserves to prevent a sharp depreciation of the currency this year.
India’s foreign exchange pile shrank by about $96bn to less than $550bn in US dollar terms between the beginning of this year and late September, owing to asset revaluation resulting from intensifying market turmoil around the world and depletion from the central bank’s currency market interventions.
For the week ended Nov 11, the local currency logged its best weekly performance in about four years helped by softer-than-expected U.S. inflation data. For the current week, the rupee ended down 1.1% at 81.6850 per dollar.
