The foreign exchange reserves recorded a marginal fall of $24 million as it dipped to $23.97 billion from $23.99 billion during the week ended January 31, 1997. The fall in reserves can primarily be attributed to the fall in the gold reserves with the Reserve Bank of India. Gold reserves fell to $4.09 billion from $4.24 billion during the same period.
The marginal depletion in gold reserves can be due to the fact that the Reserve Bank of India is selling the Gold Bonds which are due for redemption in 1998.
The central bank has put the gold bonds on the sale list and there has been demand for it from time to time.
However, during the same period, the foreign currency assets with the Reserve Bank of India grew by $103 million during the week ended January 31, 1997. The Special Drawing Rights (SDR) also went up $22 million during the week to $28 million during the same week.
Reserve money, which fell by a whopping Rs 2,667 crore during the week ended January 17, once again started to climb for the week ended January 24. It went up Rs 737 crore during the week to Rs 1,89,501 crore, thereby registering a 0.4 per cent growth over the previous week.
The rise is due the net RBI credit to the government going up. This went up by Rs 197 crore to Rs 1,25,533 crore during the week. For the week ended January 17, the net RBI credit had dipped by Rs 4,160 crore to Rs 1,25,336 crore.
The central government's share of the net RBI credit also went up by Rs 412 crore during the week.
The RBI credit to banks and the commercial sector dipped by Rs 365 crore to Rs 12,528 crore during the week ended January 24.
However, the net foreign exchange assets of the RBI grew by Rs 459 crore to Rs 86,033 crore. Among the components of reserve money, while the currency in circulation fell, the bankers' deposit with the Reserve Bank went up sharply.
Currency in circulation fell by Rs 1,450 crore
