India's forex reserves at new life-time high of USD 393.448 billion

The country's foreign exchange reserves touched a new life-time high of USD 393.448 billion after rising by USD 581.1 million in the week to August 4 on account of increase in foreign currency assets (FCAs), the RBI data showed.

In the previous week, the reserves had surged by USD 1.536 billion to USD 392.867 billion. FCAs, a major component of the overall reserves, rose by USD 964.4 million to USD 369.723 billion, the data showed.

Expressed in US dollar terms, FCAs include effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies such as the euro, the pound and the yen held in the reserves. After remaining stable for past few weeks, the gold reserves declined by USD 405.7 million to USD 19.943 billion.

In a part of its report, the Economic Survey has explained the current position of Indian economy on external debt. Here's what report says on India's external debt.

EXTERNAL DEBT
Most of the external debt indicators of India improved at end-March 2017 compared end-March, 2016. India's aggregate external debt stock at end-March 2017 stood at USD 471.9 billion registering a decline of USD 3.1 billion (2.7 per cent) over end-March 2016. The ratio of external debt to GDP fell to 20.2 per cent from 23.5 per cent, while foreign exchange reserves provided a cover of 78.4 per cent to external debt compared to 74.3 per cent in the previous year.

Debt service ratio fell to 8.3 per cent from 8.8 per cent and ratio of concessional debt to total external debt increased to 9.3 per cent from 9.0 per cent. Short term debt (residual maturity) to total external debt fell to 41.5 per cent from 42.7 per cent. Short term debt (residual maturity) to forex reserves also fell to 52.9 per cent from 57.4 per cent. Cross country comparison of external debt indicates that India continues to be among the less vulnerable countries.