India's forex reserves breach $600 billion-mark, hover around 15-month high

India's forex reserves see the biggest weekly jump in four months, as they went up by $12.74 billion to $609.02 billion, as per the Reserve Bank of India's update on Friday. Previously, forex reserves had witnessed an uptick of $1.23 billion for the week ending on July 7.

Foreign currency assets (FCAs) surged by $11.19 billion to $540.17 billion, according to the Weekly Statistical Supplement released by the RBI. Expressed in dollar terms, the FCAs include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US units like the euro, pound and yen held in the foreign exchange reserves.

Gold reserves rose $1.14 billion to $45.20 billion, while SDRs increased by $250 million to $18.500 billion.

Reserve Position in the IMF moved up by $158 million to $5.18 billion.

Typically, the RBI, from time to time, intervenes in the market through liquidity management, including through the selling of dollars, with a view to preventing a steep depreciation in the rupee. The RBI closely monitors the foreign exchange markets and intervenes only to maintain orderly market conditions by containing excessive volatility in the exchange rate, without reference to any pre-determined target level or band.

The RBI bought $7.37 billion in the spot foreign exchange market in May, showed data released on Monday as part of the central bank's monthly bulletin. The RBI did not sell any dollars in the reported month, the data showed. In April, the central bank had bought a net of $7.70 billion in the spot market. The Indian rupee depreciated by over 1 per cent against the dollar in May.