Foreign exchange reserves fell to a level not seen in almost two years for six straight weeks.
India's foreign exchange assets have fallen by more than $80 billion since the Ukraine crisis, including more than $2 billion in the past week as the Reserve Bank of India sold dollars to support the rupee's crossing of the 80-to-the-dollar threshold.
The most current weekly statistics from the RBI show that during the week ending September 9, foreign exchange reserves dropped by $2.234 billion to $550.871 billion from $553.105 billion the previous week, marking their lowest level in more than two years.
India's import coverage has fallen for six weeks in a row and 23 out of 29 weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, which is a result of the RBI's continued withdrawal of reserves to combat a rise in the US currency driven on by capital outflows to dollar-denominated assets.
Since peaking in late October, the nation's foreign exchange reserves have decreased by more than $90 billion.
Even though there has been a steady inflow of foreign capital into the country's markets, the expanding current account deficit has not been able to arrest the decline in import coverage.
The rupee plummeted dramatically this year from over $74 to a weak record high of over 80 versus the dollar; as a result, the RBI intervened to manage the currency against abrupt volatile swings.
Some evidence for it was offered by the RBI's most recent monthly bulletin, which was released on Friday and revealed that the central bank sold a net $19.05 billion in spot currency in July.
Activity on the rupee market suggests that this pattern continued into August and the current month.
The decline in the country's foreign exchange reserves will likely be the main topic for a while as the dollar continues to surge to record highs not seen in more than two decades against most major currencies.
Due to increased wagers on the Federal Reserve raising interest rates as well as warnings from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund about sluggish economic growth and rising inflation, the rupee had its worst week in five on Friday as the dollar touched a record high.
A currency broker told Reuters that market participants were wary and saw 80 rupees to the dollar as a threshold to guard against.
Indian shares plunged into a market slaughter on Friday after a worldwide sell-off brought on by the concerns of an impending recession brought on by the broadest and most aggressive tightening of policy in decades, wiping all the week's gains and extending their losses for the third session in a row.
This indicates that the RBI would keep reducing reserves to protect the rupee from significant volatility.
We predict that the strong dollar and widespread risk aversion would negatively affect the trading behavior of the rupee. Global markets crashed after IMF spokesman Gerry Rice expressed worry about a further slowdown in the global economy and said that some countries are expected to experience recession by 2023, according to Anuj Choudhary, a research analyst at Sharekhan by BNP Paribas, who spoke to PTI.
The country has nonetheless managed to outperform its rivals in emerging economies, whose import coverage has reached crisis levels, despite a sizable fall in currency reserves this year.
India's foreign exchange assets (FCA), which make up the largest portion of foreign exchange reserves, decreased by $2.519 billion to $489.598 billion in the week ending September, down from $6.527 billion to $492.117 billion in the same week during the reporting period, according to the most recent information available from the RBI.
The value of the appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies held in foreign exchange reserves, such as the euro, the pound, and the yen, is represented by the foreign currency assets denominated in dollars.
To reach $38,644,000,000,000 in value, the value of the gold reserves rose by $340,000,000.
During the reporting week, SDRs fell by $63 million to $17.719 billion, but the country's reserve position with the IMF rose by $8 million to $4.91 billion.
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