India's foreign exchange reserves scaled yet another lifetime high at $379.3 billion as of May 19, 2017, riding on the back of sustained dollar inflows from foreign portfolio investors (FPIs).
The week saw overall reserves rising $4.03 billion, mainly due to the spurt in foreign exchange assets that increased $3.99 billion to $355 billion while gold reserves stood unchanged at $20.43 billion, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its weekly statistical supplement released on Friday.
Read: 'Buy in May and sell in November'
The earlier historic high was $375.71 billion as of May 5 after which the reserves dropped to $375.27 billion as of May 12.
The reserves stood at $312.38 billion on May 30, 2014, four days after the Narendra Modi government was sworn in, translating into an increase of $67 billion, or 21.45 percent.
The buoyancy is foreign reserves during the week ended May 19 was mainly due to FPIs turning net buyers on four of the five trading days. While the net buying in the secondary market segment stood at $325 million, the inflow into primary markets was $624 million on May 19, according to data available on the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) website.
In related news, the BSE Sensex closed 278 points higher at 31,028 while the NSE Nifty closed at 9,595, up 85 points.
Top Sensex gainers included Tata Steel, ITC, Power Grid Corporation, Reliance Industries and Adani Ports while stocks that ended with losers were predominantly pharma stocks such as Sun Pharma, Cipla and Lupin, apart from State Bank of India, Bajaj Auto and GAIL (India).
Stocks that hit new 52-week highs on Friday included JM Financial, Tata Steel, Adani Transmission, Voltas, ITC, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro, KEC International and HDFC Bank.
