The RBI has remained a net purchaser of the dollar for the second consecutive month in January, having bought $293 million on a net basis from the spot market, according to the latest data.
In the reporting month, the RBI bought $1.025 billion and sold $732 million in the spot market. The central bank had turned a net buyer of dollar for the first time this fiscal in December, buying $607 million of the greenback.
In January 2018, the RBI was a net buyer of $7.364 billion, after it had purchased $7.953 billion from the market and sold $589 million. In FY18, the apex bank had net purchased $33.689 billion from the spot market, taking its total dollar purchase to $52.068 billion, and sold only $18.379 billion, which helped the country scale a life-time peak of $426.028 billion for the week to April 13, 2018, in foreign exchange reserves.
But since then, the foreign exchange kitty has been fluctuating and mostly sliding. Forex reserves stood at $401.77 billion for the fortnight ended March 1, 2019. In the forward dollar market, the outstanding forward sales at the end of January was $3.032 billion, compared to a sale of $2.426 billion in December.