First time in FY19, RBI becomes net buyer of dollars in Dec

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank has turned net buyer of dollars in December, first time in the current fiscal year, as it purchased USD 607 million of the greenback on a net basis from the spot market, according to the latest data.

The central bank bought USD 837 million and sold USD 230 million in the spot market during the reporting month.

As against this, in December 2017, the RBI was a net buyer of USD 5.647 billion, after it bought USD 6.008 billion from the market and sold USD 361 million.

Between April and November 2108, the central bank had net sold USD 26.51 billion in the spot market against net purchase of USD 18.017 billion in the same period in 2017.

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 forex reserves.

But since then, the forex kitty has been fluctuating and mostly sliding. The forex reserves stood at USD 398.122 billion for the fortnight ended February 8, 2019 and has reportedly crossed the USD 400-billion-mark last week.

In FY17, the RBI had bought USD 12.351 billion on a net basis.

In the forward dollar market, the outstanding net forward sales at the end of December 2018 was USD 2.426 billion, compared to a sale of USD 1.924 billion in November, show the RBI data.