MUMBAI: In a week when the Reserve Bank of India struggled to defend the rupee—and on a day when the currency briefly flirted with the 92-per-dollar mark before closing at a record low of 91.88—surging gold prices helped shore up the country’s foreign exchange reserves. The reserves recorded their third-largest weekly increase on record in the week ended January 16, rising by $14.2 billion to $701.36 billion.
This is the fourth time that the foreign exchange reserves have crossed the $700-billion mark and they are now just shy of the record high of $704.85 billion reached in the week ended September 27, 2024. Since then, the reserves have crossed the $700-billion level twice, including in September 2025, but have not surpassed the earlier peak.
From a weekly addition point of view, the biggest weekly addition was on August 27, 2021 when the reserves added $16.663-billion to take the total to $633.558 billion, mainly due to an increase in the special drawing rights (SDRs), after the International Monetary Fund allocated 12.57 billion (around $17.86 billion) worth of SDRs to India on August 23, 2021.
The second biggest rally was for the week to March 7, 2025 when the reserves added $15.3 billion, taking the total stockpile to $654 billion, bolstered by the Reserve Bank’s $10-billion forex swap operations conducted in February to ease liquidity. At the time, it was the highest weekly gain recorded since.
The third largest was recorded for the week to January 16, 2026: when it added $14.17 billion take the total reserves to neat record of $701.36 billion, largely driven by a sharp increase in gold holdings, which rose by $4.62 billion due to surging global prices, and a $9.65 billion jump in foreign currency assets.
