India’s foreign exchange reserves
India’s foreign exchange reserves have again crossed $600 billion level in August 2023.
In March 2023, the reserves of India stood around 578 billion dollars which further improved to 601 billion dollars in the first week of August.
It shows the economic strength of India that is constantly strengthening its reserves.
Unfortunately, in comparison with economic strength of India, Pakistan stand nowhere. The foreign exchange reserves of Pakistan hardly crossed 13 billion dollars when the IMF, China, Saudi Arabia, and UAE provided loans a couple of months ago.
India is emerging as an economic power while Pakistan has turned into a chronic international beggar, always relying on foreign assistance.
Meanwhile, China and Japan are leading among the top 10 countries with the highest foreign exchange reserves by June 30, 2023.
The Reserves of China stand at 3.384 trillion US dollars, followed by 1.247 trillion reserves of Japan. Switzerland is in the third position with 898 billion dollars in forex reserves, followed by 603 billion dollars in reserves in India.
Notably, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and France are not among the countries which fall in the ranking of top 10 foreign exchange reserves holding nations.
This data shows the foreign exchange reserves strength of leading countries.
The Truth International gathered this exclusive information to highlight the nations which are leading with the highest foreign exchange reserves in the world by June 2023.
Furthermore, the forex reserves of Russia amount to 594 billion dollars by June 30, 2023, followed by 564 billion dollars in Taiwan, 443 billion dollars in Saudi Arabia, 421 billion dollars in South Korea, 417 billion dollars in Hong Kong, and 343 billion dollars reserves in Brazil. Brazil stands in 10th position in the international foreign exchange ranking this year.
India maintains a discount rate of 6.5%
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Reserve Bank of India held its benchmark policy repo at 6.5% for the third consecutive meeting in August 2023. The Reserve Bank of India reported it on Thursday.
This came in line with the market expectations wherein the market consensus was that of a rate pause.
Policymakers said that the decision remains to align inflation to the RBI’s target of 4%.
India’s annual inflation accelerated for the first time in five months to 4.81% in June as compared to May’s 4.31%.
Accordingly, RBI also left both the standing deposit facility (SDF) rate and the marginal standing facility (MSF) at 6.25% and 6.75%, respectively.
To note, since May 2022, the board has increased rates by a total of 250bps, taking the lending rates to the highest level since January 2019.
The central bank also kept its growth projection for the fiscal year 2024 at 6.5% but revised its inflation projection upward to 5.4% from 5.1%.
