By Tamal Bandyopadhyay and Anup Roy
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India, or RBI, is buying 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), nearly half of what the fund plans to sell.
In 1991, when India faced its worst ever balance of payment crisis, the country had to pledge 67 tonnes of gold to Union Bank of Switzerland and Bank of England to raise $605 million (Rs2,843.5 crore today) to shore up its dwindling foreign exchange reserves, which were then barely enough to buy two weeks of imports. India’s foreign exchange reserves were at $1.2 billion in January 1991 and by June, they were depleted by half. Currently, the Indian central bank’s foreign exchange reserves stand at $285.5 billion.
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