MUMBAI, May 30 Reuters The Indian central bank39;s net income surged to 2.11 trillion rupees 25.30 billion for the financial year ended March 2024, up from 874.20 billion rupees in the previous year, its annual report released on Thursday showed.

The Reserve Bank of India saw a gain of 836.16 billion rupees from foreign exchange transactions during the year, while interest income from foreign securities rose to 653.28 billion rupees.

The size of the RBI39;s balance sheet increased by 11.08 to 70.48 trillion rupees, while income for the year increased by 17.04.

The RBI transferred 428.20 billion rupees towards contingency funds, raising the buffer to 6.5 from 6 last year.

In the financial year 2019, the RBI adopted a new Economic Capital Framework that requires it to maintain a contingency risk buffer of 5.56.5 of its balance sheet.

The new framework also allows the central bank to benchmark forex sales to the historical average cost of acquiring those reserves, allowing it to realise gains on such transactions during the year.

Overall income from foreign sources increased by 23.23 to 1.87 trillion rupees from 1.52 trillion last year, the central bank said, while its total expenditure decreased by 56.30 to 646.94 billion rupees from 1.48 trillion rupees last year, largely on account of lower provisions.

1 83.4050 Indian rupees

Reporting by Swati Bhat; Editing by Sohini Goswami

Source Reuters