(a) : whether the Reserve Bank of India has issued any fresh
regulations recently that would force the exporters to sale
a part of their dollar holdings in the open market in order
to arrest the declining value of rupee; and
(b) : if so, the details thereof alongwith the impact of this on the foreign exchange of the country?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (SHRI BALASAHEB VIKHE PATIL)
(a) & (b) : Reserve Bank of India introduced some measures on
August 14, 2000 and on October 10, 2000, which are as follows:
(i) The balance in Exchange Earners Foreign Currency (EEFC)
Accounts were required to be scaled down to 50 per cent of
the amount held on August 11, 2000 by August 23, 2000.
(ii) Future accretions to EEFC accounts were restricted
to 50 per cent of the eligible limits and were required to
be maintained in liquid form as current/savings accounts.
(iii) Credit facilities available against EEFC accounts were
held in abeyance till further notice.
(iv) The EEFC scheme was reviewed in the light of previous
experience and feed back received from premier export
organisations and the modifications were announced as a part
of October 10, 2000 statement of mid term review of monetary
and credit policy for the year 2000-01. Accordingly, in order
to facilitate quick export related payments and reduced
transactions cost, the EEFC entitlements were restored
to their earlier levels. It was also decided that the
EEFC accounts would hence forth be held in the form of
current accounts and no credit facilities will be provided
by banks against the EEFC balances.
The above measure, which augmented supply
of foreign exchange in the market, supplements other measures
taken by the RBI to contain exchange rate volatility.