India's forex reserves up $837.8 mn

India's foreign exchange (forex) reserves went up by $837.8 million to $294.81 billion for the week ended Sep 28, 2012, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data shows.

Forex was down $502 million for the week ended Sep 21, 2012. The reserves had risen by $2.43 billion to $294.47 billion for the week ended Sep 14, and subsequently grown by $1.58 billion to $292 billion for the previous week.

However, foreign currency assets (FCA), the biggest component of the forex reserves, in the week under review fell $1.07 billion to $259.95 billion, according to the weekly statistical supplement released by the RBI.

The FCA were down by $48 million to $261.03 billion for the week ended Sep 21, 2012. The FCA had risen by $2.33 billion to $261.51 billion for the week ended Sep 14, 2012.

The RBI in a statement said that FCA in US dollar terms included the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies held in reserve, such as the pound sterling, euro and yen.

The value of gold reserves zoomed by $1.89 billion at $28.13 billion. The gold reserves were stagnant at $26.23 billion for the past two weeks.

The special drawing rights (SDRs) decreased by $9.5 million to $4.45 billion during the week ended Sep 28, 2012. While, reserves with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) increased by $26.5 million to $2.27 billion during the week under review.

The SDRs had increased by $11.2 million to $4.46 billion for the week ended Sep 21, 2012, while India's reserves with the IMF grew by $5.6 million to $2.24 billion in the previous week.