Foreign exchange reserves were up by $201 million in the week ended February 8, 2002, over the preceding week. The reserves stood at $49.766 billion. Since March-end 2001, a total of $7.485 billion has been accrued to the country's forex kitty.
In the reporting week, the forex reserves were up solely on account of the foreign currency assets (FCAs) which were up by $201 million over the previous week. The FCAs as on February 8 stood at $46.848 billion.
The gold reserves and the special drawing rights (SDRs) remained unchanged at $ 2.913 billion and $ 5 million, respectively.
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"The reserves of the country are steadily being built-up and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor's comment a couple of weeks back that the central bank is buying dollars in a major way underscores this fact. Moreover, the healthy reserves level enables the RBI to engineer a depreciation in the Indian currency so that Indian exports are competitive in the global markets," said a senior economist with a foreign bank.
The non-food credit extended by banks was at Rs 42,701 crore between March-end 2001 and January 25, 2002, compared with an offtake of Rs 50,938 crore during the year-ago period. As per the RBI's latest weekly statistical supplement, in the fortnight ended January 25, non-food credit offtake from the scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) was at Rs 1,521 crore.
The increase in non-food credit was accompanied by a decline in investments by SCBs in the reporting fortnight. Investments in government securities were Rs 3,079 crore lower in the reporting fortnight.
Food credit extended by the SCBs was at Rs 14,689 crore between March-end 2001 and January 25, 2002, as against Rs 13,387 crore during the year-ago period. In the fortnight ended January 25, food credit offtake from SCBs was at Rs 1,485 crore.
Investments by SCBs in commercial papers, shares and bonds/debentures in the March-end 2001 to January 11, 2002, period were worth Rs 2,499 crore against Rs 9,517 crore during the year-ago period.
A break-up of the investments by SCBs during the March-end 2001 to January 11, 2002, period shows that they invested Rs 761 crore in commercial papers (Rs 2,133 crore during the year-ago period) and Rs 1,694 crore in bonds/debentures (Rs 7,514 crore).
Investments by SCBs in government securities in the financial year so far were worth Rs 61,664 crore against Rs 47,769 crore in the corresponding period last year.