India’s foreign exchange reserves grows $741 million

India's foreign exchange reserves grew $741 million to $284.262 billion as on week ended January 8 as foreign currency assets of the country rose a result of revaluation of non-dollar assets in reserves.

Country’s foreign exchange reserves had risen by $22 million for the previous week ended January 1, while recording an increase of $32.277 billion since March-end 2009.

According to the latest figures released by the Reserve Bank of India, foreign currency assets recorded a strong growth of $772 million while special drawing rights dropped by $24 million and the country’s reserve position at the International Monetary Fund fell by $7 million.

The country’s total foreign currency assets were recorded at $259.406 billion and gold reserves were at $18.292 billion as on week ended January 8.

Special drawing rights and India's reserve position in the IMF stood at $5.145 billion and $1.419 billion respectively.

Around 40% of the country’s reserves are believed to be in currencies other than the US dollar such as, the sterling pound, yen, euro and the yuan.

Other figures released showed that the total stock of cash currency and deposits with the banks recorded a growth of 1.5% or Rs 76,123 crore to Rs 58,85,446 crore as on January 1 over the previous fortnight’s levels. While growth in demand and term deposits rose Rs 42,014 crore and Rs 44,029 crore respectively, the currency with the public dipped Rs 8,676 during the fortnight.

The ways and means advances (WMA) account of the states and centre with the RBI were kept vacant during the week ended January 8.

It is a facility in which government (state/centre) can borrow from the RBI to deal with its daily mismatches in revenues. The prevailing repo rate is rate for borrowing within limit while above limit borrowing is 2% higher than the repo rate.