First Time in FY19, RBI Becomes Net Buyer of Dollars in December

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

The central bank bought $837 million and sold $230 million in the spot market during the reporting month. As against this, in December 2017, the RBI was a net buyer of $5.647 billion, after it bought $6.008 billion from the market and sold $361 million.

Between April and November 2018, the central bank had net sold $26.51 billion in the spot market against net purchase of $18.017 billion in the same period in 2017.

In FY18, the apex bank had net purchased $33.689 billion from the spot market, taking its total dollar purchase to $52.068 billion, and sold only $18.379 billion, this helped the country for the first time scale a life-time peak of $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 $398.122 billion for the fortnight ended February 8, 2019 and has reportedly crossed the $400-billion-mark last week. In FY17, the RBI had bought $12.351 billion on a net basis.

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