The Reserve Bank of India has turned net buyer of dollars in December, first time in the current fiscal year, as it purchased $607 million of the greenback on a net basis from the spot market, according to the latest data.
The central bank bought $837 million and sold $230 million in the spot market during the reporting month.
In December 2017, the RBI was a net buyer of $5.647 billion, after it bought $6.008 billion from the market and sold $361 million.
Between April and November 2018, the central bank had net sold $26.51 billion in the spot market against a net purchase of $18.02 billion a year ago.
In FY18, the apex bank had net purchased $33.69 billion from the spot market, taking its total dollar purchase to $52.07 billion, and sold only $18.38 billion. This helped the country for the first time scale a life-time peak of $426.03 billion for the week to April 13, 2018 in forex reserves.
But since then, the forex kitty has been fluctuating and mostly sliding. The forex reserves stood at $398.12 billion for the fortnight ended Feb. 8, 2019 and has reportedly crossed the $400-billion-mark last week.
In FY17, the RBI had bought $12.35 billion on a net basis.
In the forward dollar market, the outstanding net forward sales as of December 2018 was $2.43 billion, compared to a sale of $1.92 billion in November, show the RBI data.