Forex reserves rise $11.02 billion to $561.162 billion

This is the fourth consecutive week when the country’s foreign exchange reserves have risen, mainly due to the gains in valuation after the US currency weakened against the rupee and other major currencies, and also as the Reserve Bank bought US dollars from the spot market to stem volatility in the rupee, analysts said.

There has been a gain of $31.17 billion in the country’s foreign reserves between the weeks ended November 4, 2022 and December 2, 2022.

At $561.16 billion, the country’s forex reserves can cover around 9 months of projected imports for 2022-23, the Reserve Bank of India’s governor Shaktikanta Das has recently said.

In the week ended November 12, the reserves had surged to $544.71 billion after it increased by $14.72 billion, the biggest weekly jump in the last 15 months.

The rupee has been gaining against the dollar in the last few sessions as investors are buying riskier assets in hope the Federal Reserves will moderate the pace of its rate hike in its meeting scheduled next week.

On Friday, the rupee gained 10 paise to close at 82.28 against the US currency. It had settled at 82.38 against the dollar on Thursday.

So far in December, foreign portfolio investors have bought Rs 4,500 crore of shares from the domestic capital market. In the previous month, foreign investors pumped in Rs 36,239 crore into domestic equities.

In the previous week ended December 2, the foreign currency assets (FCA), a major component of the overall reserves, rose by $9.69 billion to $496.98 billion.

Movements in the FCA occur mainly on account of purchase and sale of foreign exchange by the RBI, income arising out of the deployment of the foreign exchange reserves, external aid receipts of the central government and changes on account of revaluation of the assets.

In the reporting week, the gold reserves also increased by $1.09 billion to $41.025 billion.