Inflow of foreign funds, both in terms of foreign direct investment and foreign institutional investment, has pushed up the forex reserves of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by $128 million to an all-time high of $42.782 billion during the week ended on May 4.
So far in May, foreign investment in Indian stocks and bonds has been $72.5 million. During the year, so far, the flow has been stronger at $2.19 billion compared with just $1.56 billion in all of the previous year. Foreign direct investment till March was $959.2 million.
The forex reserves would have gone up more but couldn't because of a $30 million dip in the gold reserves to $2.695 billion. The foreign currency assets increased by $158 million to $40.077 billion, while the special drawing rights reserves remained unchanged at $10 million.
Credit provided by the Indian banking industry during the first month of the financial year fell by Rs 6,112 crore to Rs 5,18,833 crore reflecting the industrial slowdown. The decline in the credit was due to fall in non-food and food-credit.
Non-food credit went down by Rs 5,660 crore to Rs 4,79,524 crore, while the food credit fell by Rs 452 crore to Rs 39,309 crore.
Aggregate deposits of the scheduled commercial banks went up by Rs 8,486 crore during the month to Rs 9,91,754 crore. Demand deposits were down by Rs 5,773 crore to Rs 1,47,055 crore, while the time deposits went up by Rs 8,44,699 crore.
Investment portfolio of the banking industry increased by Rs 11,085 crore to Rs 3,77,733 crore during the month.
Investment in the government securities went up by Rs 10,565 crore to Rs 3,46,469 crore reflecting the aggressive auctions conducted by the RBI during the month.
The ways-and-means advances to the central government went up Rs 2,705 crore to Rs 9,109 crore during the week ended on May 4. However, the loans and advances to the state governments came down by Rs 2,688 crore during the week to Rs 4,485 crore.
Money supply, measured in terms of M3, went up by Rs 4,251 crore to Rs 13,48,278 crore during the fortnight ended on April 20. However, the year-on-year growth of the money supply till April 20 remained higher at 17.3 per cent compared with 15.6 per cent during the corresponding period of the last year.
Reserve money fell by Rs 3,228 crore to Rs 3,08,690 crore during the week ended on May 4. The currency in circulation went up by Rs 4,788 crore to Rs 2,32,784 crore, while the bankers' deposits with the RBI dipped by Rs 9,111 crore to Rs 71,099 crore. Other deposits with the central bank, however, went up by Rs 1,094 crore to Rs 4,808 crore.
