Context: Booming in Foreign Exchange Reserve has benefit and issues that need to be addressed.
Booming of foreign exchange reserve
- India has one of the largest foreign exchange reserves: Foreign exchange reserves have gone up by over $160 billion since the beginning of the last fi2020-21 and are currently at about $640 billion.
- India could soon have reserves worth over $700 billion.
Different usability of foreign exchange reserves
- Reserves should be used to finance infrastructure needs.
- Foreign currency can be used to buy foreign goods and services, or assets: Use of reserves would mean that India will be importing a lot of equipment and material for building infrastructure.
- This is unlikely to be the preferred way and will have a variety of macroeconomic implications.
- Formation of sovereign wealth fund: It would allow India to buy assets overseas.
- Intervention in the currency market as it added to the rupee liquidity in the system and enabled the RBI to push market interest rates lower during the pandemic.
- Addressing external risks: Tighten monetary policy by the USA could result in tightening of global financial conditions, and capital could flow out from a country like India, at least temporarily.
- Although India is in a much better position compared to the “taper tantrum” episode of 2013.
Issues with Foreign Exchange Reserve
- Investment in highly liquid assets results into low returns: Returns may have suffered further because of lower interest rates in developed markets.
- It will increase risks and could potentially defeat the purpose of holding reserves.
- India has not built its foreign exchange reserves by running a current account surplus: India regularly runs a current account deficit, which means it is a net importer of goods and services from rest of world.
- India’s reserves essentially reflect the excess flow of capital, and part of it could get reversed fairly quickly.
- As per the RBI’s report on foreign exchange reserves, ratio of volatile flows to reserves is over 65%.
- India’s reserves went up sharply over the last 18 months or so because of higher capital flows.
- Excessively accommodative monetary policy in advanced economies, particularly the US, led to a higher flow of capital.
- Fall in currency triggered by large capital outflows can become self-fulfilling and pose risks to financial stability.
- India’s fiscal position: A significant delay in sustainable fiscal path would increase growth risks and affect capital flows.
- Higher reserves can potentially attract more capital flows and make currency management difficult.
Way Forward
- Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should diversify its investment to increase yields.
- Sustained intervention by the RBI will push up the level of rupee liquidity in the system and increase inflation risks. Continued sterilisation has its own costs.
- India can revisit the kind of foreign flows it needs: Foreign direct investment and equity flows should be preferred to debt.
- The policy establishment is aiming to get government bonds included in global bond indices.
- It will increase the flow of debt capital, which is not desirable at this stage, and would make foreign exchange management more difficult.
- This would also increase India’s exposure to external shocks.
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