New Delhi: According to RBI data released on Friday, India’s foreign exchange reserves rose $ 4.5 billion to $ 690.62 billion in the week ended 9 May. A major component of foreign exchange reserves, foreign exchange assets, rose $ 196 million to $ 581.37 billion.
Foreign exchange assets expressed in terms of dollars include the effect of value growth or depreciation of non-American units such as euros, pounds and yens placed in foreign exchange reserves. The RBI statement said that the gold reserves, which is also part of the foreign exchange reserves, increased by $ 4.5 million to $ 86.33 billion during the week.
However, special drawing rights fell by $ 26 million to $ 18.53 billion. Top bank data shows that India’s reserved position with the IMF also fell by $ 134 million to $ 4.37 billion in the week under review. The country’s foreign exchange reserves strengthens the rupee against the US dollar.
The increase in foreign exchange reserves reflects the strong infrastructure of the economy and gives more scope to the RBI to stabilize it in case of instability in the rupee. Strong foreign exchange reserves enable the RBI to intervene in spot and futures markets by issuing more dollars to prevent the rupee from falling.
In contrast, due to the decline in foreign exchange reserves, the RBI has less scope to intervene in the market to support the rupee. Meanwhile, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce on Thursday, India’s external territory has strengthened and in April, the total exports of goods and services recorded a strong increase of 12.7 percent, which has touched a level of $ 73.80 billion against the same month in the same month. However, global economic uncertainty remains due to tariff hike by the US.
During the month, the country’s goods exports increased by 9.03 percent to $ 38.49 billion, with the highest growth in high -value electronics and engineering goods, which reflects the country’s growing manufacturing base.
Electronic goods exports increased by 39.51 percent to $ 3.69 billion in April, which was $ 2.65 billion in the same month last year. Engineering goods exports increased by 11.28 percent to $ 9.51 billion in April, which was $ 8.55 billion in April last year, while gems and jewelery exports increased by 10.74 percent to $ 2.5 billion, which was $ 2.26 billion.
