Mumbai:
The foreign exchange reserves of the country plummeted by over $2.402 billion to $285.86 billion for the week ended June 1, the Reserve Bank has said in its weekly statistical supplement. The reserves stood at $288.26 billion during the previous week.
It was for the fourth consecutive week that the reserves have gone down. The fall in reserves was possibly due to the dollar selling by the apex bank to prop up the rupee as also due to fall in international gold prices during the period. Changes in foreign currency assets, expressed in dollar terms, include the effect of appreciation/depreciation of other currencies held in its reserves, the RBI said.
As of June 1, the foreign currency assets slipped to $253,094 million from $254,406 million. During the year-ago period, it stood at a high $280,908 million. The value of gold reserves too fell to $25,585 million from $26,618 million. In the year-ago period on June 3, it was still lower at $24,391 million. The SDRs also fell marginally to $4,347 million from $4,381 million in the previous week and from $4,623 million on June 3, 2011.
