RBI Announced Indian Quarterly International Investment Position

OREANDA-NEWS. June 30, 2011. International investment position (IIP) is a statistical statement that shows at a point in time, the value and the composition of (a) financial assets of residents of an economy that are claims on non-residents and gold bullion held as reserve assets; and (b) liabilities of residents of an economy to non-residents. The difference between an economy's external financial assets and liabilities is its net IIP, which may be positive or negative. Such balance sheet analysis of international accounts helps in understanding sustainability and vulnerability and is useful for analysing economic structure, studying the relationship to domestic sources of financing and other policy considerations.

As per the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), data on IIP are to be disseminated on an annual basis with a time lag of two quarters (quarterly encouraged with one quarter's lag). India's quarterly IIP was being disseminated with a lag of less than two quarters since June 2006 and the lag reduced to one quarter since June 2009. The last quarterly IIP as at end- December 2010 was put in public domain on March 31 2011.

Following are the highlights of IIP for the quarter-ended March 2011: I. Overall International Investment Position

(a) Quarterly Variations:

Net claims of non-residents on India as reflected by the Net IIP (International financial assets less International financial liabilities) increased by USD  1.5 billion over the previous quarter to USD  218.9 billion as at end- March 2011, mainly due to increase in net inflow on account of direct investment and external commercial borrowings (ECBs) (Table I).

International financial assets stood at USD  424.5 billion as at end-March 2011 with increase of USD  14.5 billion over the previous quarter. Reserve assets, which remained the major source, increased by USD  7.5 billion to USD  304.8 billion at end-March 2011. Among other sources, Direct Investment abroad moved up by USD  4.3 billion during the quarter to USD  98.2 billion as at end-March 2011.

Table I: Overall International Investment Position (USD  billion)

R: Revised       PR: Partially revised     P: Provisional;

Note- Where necessary, each figure has been rounded off to the nearest final digit. For this reason, in some tables, the sum of the constituent items may not add to the total. Footnotes given in this table are also applicable for other tables.