India's exposure to US government debt stands at $59 billion

India has an exposure worth USD 59 billion to the US government securities, amid growing concerns over possible debt default by the world's largest economy.
However, the country's holding of US Treasury securities, which stood at USD 59.1 billion in July, is the second lowest among the BRICS nations.
India has trimmed its exposure in July compared to holdings worth USD 61.2 billion seen in June, according to official figures from the Treasury department.
In January this year, the exposure of India to these securities stood at USD 58.5 billion which came down to USD 56.8 billion in February. The succeeding month, the same was again trimmed to USD 55 billion.

As per the data, India started to increase its holdings from April onwards, when it reached USD 55.8 billion, till June.
In May and June, the exposure stood at USD 59.9 billion and USD 61.2 billion, respectively.

Meanwhile, China is the largest holder of American government securities, which stood at over USD 1.28 trillion followed by Japan with holdings worth USD 1.14 trillion. These figures are for July.
Among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Brazil has the maximum exposure to American government securities after China.
In July, Brazil's holdings were worth USD 256.4 billion, while that of Russia was at USD 131.6 billion. The least exposure was for South Africa at USD 13.8 billion.

The United States, caught in political brinkmanship, is staring at the prospect of defaulting on its debt obligations unless the Congress allows raising the USD 16.7 trillion debt ceiling.
A few days back, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan had ruled out selling out the Indian assets in the US.
"We (India) do not worry about that issue (US defaulting). We are not selling our US assets. We are holding on to them," Rajan said.
"I have to say, whatever default, will be a technical default. We do not expect the US not... From my understanding, because repayments can be prioritised, unless there is a sudden stop and markets stop taking new US debt meant to refinance the old debt there is no chance that the US will default," he noted.