New
Delhi: The country's external debt has gone up by
$7.84 billion during the first half of the current fiscal.
According to the Finance Ministry, the total debt stock
as on end-September 2003 amounted to $112.54 billion,
compared to the end-March 2003 level of $104.70 billion.
More
than half of the $7.84 billion increase in the overall
debt was on account of the $4.03 billion surge in long-term
non-resident Indian (NRI) deposits, from $23.16 billion
to $27.19 billion. The other major contributors to the
build-up of external debt during the first half of 2003-04
were short-term debt (up $1.59 billion, from $4.57 billion
to $6.16 billion) and commercial borrowings (up $1.28
billion, from $22.37 billion to $23.65 billion).
The
biggest component of the total external debt stock of
$112.54 billion as on end-September 2003 was multilateral
debt ($30.57 billion), followed by long-term NRI deposits
($27.19 billion), commercial borrowings ($23.65 billion),
bilateral debt ($17.54 billion), short-term debt ($6.16
billion), export credit ($4.82 billion) and rupee debt
($2.60 billion).
The Finance Ministry has, however, sought to underplay
the increase in the debt stock by referring to the substantial
jump in the country's foreign currency assets, from $2,236
million in March 1991 to $87,213 million in end-September
2003.
"During
this period, the average annual compound growth rate of
forex assets in dollar terms was 32.6 per cent as compared
to 2.3
per cent in the external debt. Thus, the accretion to
reserves in the recent period has been largely through
non-debt creating inflows," it pointed out.
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