The Hindu Business Line : External debt up $7.84 b in first half

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.