India's external debt up at $297.5-bn in Dec’10
01 Apr 2011
New Delhi: India's external debt went up 13.9% to $297.5 billion at the end of December 2010, as compared to March 2010 when it stood at $261.2 billion. The debt includes commercial borrowings and NRI deposits.
"The long-term debt increased by $26.0 billion to $234.9 billion i.e. an increase of 12.5%. The short-term debt showed an increase of $10.3 billion to $62.6 billion," India's finance ministry said in a statement. Short-term debt (original maturity) accounted for 21% of India's total external debt while long-term debt accounted for the remaining 79%.
Depreciation of the US dollar against major international currencies resulted in India's total amount increasing by $5.3 billion (14.6%) in a total increase of $36.3 billion.
''Excluding the valuation effect, the increase in external debt would have been $31.0 billion," a Department of Economic Affairs' quarterly statistics report said.
The break–up of overall debt into various components shows that the share of commercial borrowings stood highest at 28.5%, followed by NRI deposits (17%) and multilateral debt (16%).
The government (sovereign) external debt stood at $74.5 billion (25% of total external debt) at end-December 2010, as against $67.1 billion (25.7%) at end-March 2010.
