The rise in reserves was $2.12 billion.
The finance ministry said on Tuesday that high energy and commodity prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine may provide an upside risk to inflation and continued vigil is required. "Going forward, elevated energy and commodity prices may act as an upside risk to the inflation outlook in the near-medium term. "Given the inherently unsustainable nature of high prices, international commodity prices are expected to level off early with an increase in supplies outside the crisis zone," the department of economic affairs said in its latest monthly economic report for February.
"President of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa is still in the country, I made a mistake in the (BBC) interview," Speaker Abeywardena told ANI in a telephone call.
India, he said, has already taken a host of reforms in banking and other sectors and is now focussing on stepping up public investment. "Compared to other nations, even among advanced countries, I think India is relatively better placed for the simple reason that India paid a certain price last decade... we had a banking system stress which was then compounded by stress in the non-banking financial sector towards 2018," he said at Amazon Smbhav Summit.
A sharp rally in domestic stocks from June lows has once again rendered Indian markets expensive to their emerging-market (EM) peers. The 12-month forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple for the Nifty50 Index is around 20.6x - 82 per cent higher than 11.3 per cent for the MSCI EM Index. India's valuation premium has hit a five-month high. This is on the back of sharp outperformance to EM and global peers from June lows and also due to earnings downgrades, following the April-June quarter of 2022-23 earnings.
The move by Islamabad comes as it is also approaching Western and Gulf donors for rescue packages at a time when its foreign exchange reserves fell to a six-year low of less than $8 billion. Experts have said Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves, in real terms, are barely adequate to cater for imports for one-and-half months.
It plans to use it as collateral, along with forex reserves, to print currency.
The central government is on track to meet its fiscal deficit target of 6.4 per cent of the GDP for 2022-23 on the back of strong growth in revenue collections, the World Bank said in its India Development Update on Tuesday. High nominal GDP growth in the first quarter supported strong growth in revenue collection, especially Goods and Services Tax (GST), despite tax cuts on fuel. Notwithstanding an increase in spending due to expanded fertilizer subsidies and food subsidies for vulnerable households in response to the commodity price shock, the government is on track to meet its FY22/23 fiscal deficit target of 6.4 per cent of GDP and the general government deficit is projected to decline to 9.6 per cent from 10.3 per cent in FY21/22 and 13.3 per cent in FY20/21.
Reserves provide a cushion against shocks.
For the week under review, Special Drawing Rights fell by $ 13 million to $4.19 billion, while India's reserve position with the International Monetary Fund was down $3.5 million to $1.14 billion.
Foreign exchange reserves jumped $1.17 billion to touch a new record high of $355.46 billion.
The increase has been mainly on account of higher FII inflows, deposits by non-residents and short-term credits.
Foreign exchange reserves had touched a record of $363.5 billion in the week through June 3, 2016.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said the Indian economy may have slowed down but there is no threat of a recession.
The Pakistan Parliament witnessed multiple adjournments and heated arguments, but the voting on a no-confidence motion against him appeared to be a distant possibility.
With economic activity still to reach pre-pandemic levels, the RBI may slow down the pace of rate hikes until next year to quell soaring inflation while supporting growth, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) says in its latest report. The Manila-based multilateral funding agency has raised the inflation forecast for the current fiscal year ending in March 2023 to 6.7 per cent from its earlier projection of 5.8 per cent. For the next fiscal year too, the forecast has been revised upwards to 5.8 per cent from 5 per cent earlier.
The Reserve Bank of India on Friday raised the benchmark lending rate by 50 basis points to 5.40 per cent to tame inflation.
For the banking system a new cycle starts in FY2024. It's fraught with fresh challenges on asset quality and profitability, warns Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on March 17 had announced that State Bank of India (SBI) would extend a term loan of $1 billion to Sri Lanka, fully guaranteed by the Indian government, and this was part of India's financial aid to the troubled island nation. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi was quoted saying by news agency PTI that the loan would be used for importing food, medicines, and other essential items. "India has always stood with the people of Sri Lanka and we will continue to extend all possible support at this juncture.
India's current account surplus moderated to $15.5 billion or 2.4 per cent of the GDP in the July-September quarter of the current fiscal, the RBI said on Wednesday. The same was at $19.2 billion or 3.8 per cent of the GDP in the preceding three-month period on account of a rise in the merchandise trade deficit, the RBI said in a statement on 'Developments in India's Balance of Payments during the Second Quarter (July-September) of 2020-21'. It is for the third consecutive quarter that India's current account remained in surplus. In the last quarter of 2019-20, the surplus was $0.6 billion. Current account deficit/surplus reflects the difference between the outflow and inflow of foreign exchange in a country's current account.
China, with $853.7 billion in its vaults, has just toppled Japan's long-held status as the world's largest holder of foreign exchange reserves, the state media reported.
RBI holds 557.75 tonnes of gold as part of foreign exchange reserves.
Continuing the trend of the last two weeks, India's foreign exchange reserves, hit by revaluation of foreign currencies, dipped by a massive $1.30 billion for the week ended May 13, 2005.
Gold reserves were up by $712 million to $34.729 billion.
The windfall taxes on domestic crude oil production and fuel exports will generate close to $12 billion (Rs 94,800 crore) for the government in the remainder of the current fiscal while trimming profits of firms such as Reliance Industries Ltd and ONGC, Moody's Investors Service said Tuesday. On July 1, the government imposed windfall gain taxes on the export of petrol, diesel and aviation turbine fuel (ATF), and on the domestic production of crude oil. It has also mandated exporters to meet the requirements of the domestic market first.
India's foreign exchange reserves are at an all-time high.
The Reserve Bank on Monday warned that India's foreign exchange reserves mostly comprise borrowed funds and the country is vulnerable to sudden outflow of funds.
After declining for two consecutive weeks, the country's foreign exchange reserves jumped by $2.294 billion to $316.801 billion on the back of healthy rise in foreign currency assets last week.
Theoretically, the currency with the public should expand in sync with the nominal income, which again moves in relation to the nominal growth rate of the economy. But the correlation breaks easily when other factors come into play, says Anup Roy.
Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide US$ 4.2 billion worth of assistance to cash-strapped Pakistan to support its economy, it emerged on Wednesday after Prime Minister Imran Khan held talks with Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman in Riyadh this week.
Rise in reserves was predominantly on account of increase in FCAs
India's foreign exchange reserves continue to be on the upswing following fresh inflows of $700 million to cross the $88 billion mark for the week ending September 19, 2003.
For the second week in a row, India's foreign exchange reserves fell by a whopping $1.25 billion to $118.31 billion for the week ended July 30.
After having declined for two consecutive weeks, India's foreign exchange reserves grew by $293 million to $282.84 billion compared to earlier week's $282.55-billion.
The rise in India's foreign exchange reserves continued with further fresh inflows and export remittances of $595 millon pushing the forex reserves past the $71 billion mark during the week ended January 10.
The ruble has recouped most of its losses and become the top-performing currency globally. It continues to gain and is up 60 per cent against the US dollar from its lows in the first week of March. The ruble appreciated to 83 to the dollar intraday on Tuesday against a record low of 139 on March 7.
During the reporting week, gold reserves increased marginally by $87 million to $26.796 billion.
Subbarao said the flight of dollar being witnessed following the euro zone crisis is a 'natural reaction' when there is an uncertainty.
India's foreign exchange reserves declined by $4.56 billion to $282.79 billion for the week ended August 13, as against $287.35 billion the previous week due to a heavy dent in foreign currency assets.
