RBI remains net buyer of dollars in Jan with USD 293 million from spot market

The Reserve Bank has remained net purchaser of the dollar for the second consecutive month in January, having bought USD 293 million on a net basis from the spot market, according to the latest data. In the reporting month, RBI bought USD 1.025 billion and sold USD 732 million in the spot market.

The central bank had turned net buyer of dollars for the first time in this fiscal in December buying USD 607 million of the greenback. In January 2018, RBI was a net buyer of USD 7.364 billion, after it had purchased USD 7.953 billion from the market and sold USD 589 million.

In FY18, the apex bank had net purchased USD 33.689 billion from the spot market, taking its total dollar purchase to USD 52.068 billion, and sold only USD 18.379 billion, this helped the country for the first time scale a life-time peak of USD 426.028 billion for the week to April 13, 2018 in the foreign exchange reserves. But since then, the forex kitty has been fluctuating and mostly sliding. The forex reserves stood at USD 401.77 billion for the fortnight ended March 1, 2019.

In the forward dollar market, the outstanding forward sales at the end of January was USD 3.032 billion, compared to a sale of USD 2.426 billion in December.

(With inputs from agencies.)