Rising price of gold boosts central bank's forex reserves coffers

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) strategy to add gold to forex reserves has started yielding fruits. The rising price of the precious metal has helped the central bank increase overall forex reserves despite currency reserves not rising, and sometimes even falling.

According to the RBI’s forex reserves data, put out every week, its foreign currency reserves in end-June was $400 billion. On August 2, it fell marginally to $399 billion, according to data released on Friday.

In the same period, however, the gold reserves increased $2.2 billion to a total of $25.16 billion.

Total forex reserves, including all assets,