Mumbai, Aug 18: Foreign exchange reserves rose by almost $10 billion from the first five months of the current fiscal and is now at a striking distance to the $85-bn mark. During the week ended August 8, foreign currency assets, buoyed by the $294-mn inflow of Infosys' ADS money, external commercial borrowings and dollar intervention by the reserve Bank of India, took the reserves to $84.997bn.
According to the weekly statistical supplement issued by the RBI, this reflects a rise of $297mn during the week. This is solely due to the rise in foreign currency assets. At the close of the week, the assets stood at $81.364 mn, while gold reserves were unchanged at $3628mn and special drawing rights at $5mn.
During the first five months of this fiscal year, between March 28 (when the reserves stood at $ 74.805bn) and August 8 '03, the FER has increased by almost $10bn. Market sources said that the rise is mainly on account of dollar intervention by the RBI to arrest appreciation of rupee against the dollar.
The rupee closed 45.90 on Thursday against the US dollar. Market sources said the rupee may appreciate in the coming weeks and could touch 45.70 by end September since liquidity is abundant and the rush for ECBs continue.

Meanwhile, the RBI loans to the state governments were at Rs 3,430 crore, up by Rs 1,001 crore over the previous week's, while the central bank's loans to the Central government through the ways and means advance declined by Rs 4,755 crore, resulting in a nil balance.
Bureau Report