Forex reserves swell $157 mn as gold shines.

MUMBAI: FOREIGN exchange reserves rose $157 million during the week ended April 30, on higher valuation of gold in reserves during the week.

According to the latest data released by the Reserve Bank of India, the value of gold in reserves rose $551 million to touch $18,537 million. Foreign currency assets comprising dollars, pounds and euro, among others, on the other hand dipped $354 m during the week. Special Drawing Rights (SDR) — reserve currency with the International Monetary Fund — and the reserve capital with the IMF dipped by $6m and $34m, respectively, during the week.

In the banking sector, banks have again started parking funds in mutual funds in the absence of lending opportunities during this time of the year. They parked an additional Rs 766 crore during the fortnight ended April 23 to take their total MF exposure to Rs 1,06,285 crore.

In other developments, the central government has reduced its outstanding in its ways and means advances (WMA) account with the RBI to Rs 28,868 crore as on April 30 from Rs 31,349crore in the previous week. WMA is a facility under which the government — states as well as the Centre — can borrow from the central bank to meet its daily revenue mismatches.


While borrowings within the limit is at the prevailing repo rate, borrowings above the agreed limit (between the government and RBI) is at 2% higher than the repo rate. The state governments on the other hand hiked their WMA outstanding to Rs 1073 crore, up from Rs 552 crore over the previous week’s levels.

Source : The Economic Times