Ways And Means Advances Drop To 8822 Crore

The twin auction of Rs 6,000 crore on August 8, 2001, has pulled down the ways and means advances to the central government from Rs 15,332 crore on August 3 to Rs 8,822 crore on August 10. Analysts expect the advances to have come down even more during the last week due to the Rs 9,350 crore dividend paid by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to the central government.

The loans and advances to the state governments, however, went up by Rs 1,289 crore during the week ended August 10 to Rs 5,068 crore.

Credit off-take of the banking industry went up by Rs 1,137 crore (0.2 per cent) during the fortnight ended July 27, 2001, to Rs 5,24,184 crore. Non-food credit rose by a mere Rs 889 crore to Rs 4,73,157, while food credit increased by Rs 249 crore in the period. The growth in non-food credit was as high as Rs 3,952 crore in the previous fortnight.

Aggregate deposits of scheduled commercial banks grew by Rs 5,917 crore (0.6 per cent) during the fortnight ended July 27. The growth could have been more but for a Rs 248 crore decline in demand deposits. Time deposits went up Rs 6,165 crore.

The year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in aggregate deposits as on July 27 was 19.4 per cent (15.1 per cent last year) at Rs 1,66,001 crore (Rs 1,12,431 crore).

Investments made by commercial banks for the statutory liquidity ratio requirements rose by Rs 3,923 crore during the fortnight ended July 27 to Rs 4,06,732 crore. The bulk of the investments was made in government securities, with funds deployed for that purpose rising by Rs 3,848 crore. Investments in other approved securities went up by only Rs 74 crore.

Commercial banks' investment in the corporate debt paper increased by Rs 324 crore during the fortnight to Rs 65,274 crore.

Money supply measured in terms of M3 went up by Rs 1,312 crore (0.1 per cent) during the fortnight to July 27 to Rs 13,82,282 crore. Reserve money increased by Rs 3,092 crore (one per cent) to Rs 3,03,662 crore during the week ended on August 10.

The country's foreign exchange reserves continued to go up. The reserves went up by $326 million during the week ended August 10 to $44.135 billion. The growth in forex reserves in the reporting week is solely due an accretion of $326 million to the foreign currency assets at $41.355 billion. Gold and foreign exchange reserves remained unchanged at $2.771 billion and $9 million, respectively.