RBI Becomes Net Buyer Of Dollars In December
The RBI bought $837 million and sold $230 million in the spot market in December.
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.