New Delhi: India's foreign exchange (Forex) reserves for the first time crossed $ 100 billion, top Finance Ministry officials said today (Dec 20, 2003).

The rising Forex reserves were mainly due to strong Foreign Institutional Investments (FII) and Euro gaining against the US Dollar. Euro had gained substantially against US Dollar, thereby improving the valuation gains.

The other reasons, according to the market sources, had been steady inflows through exporters and private remittances, improved Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and rising prices of the Yellow metal.

With yet another record inflows of over US $ 1 billion during the week ending December 12, 2003, India's Forex reserves neared the US $100 billion mark, according to Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) latest figures.

For the third time within a month, the country witnessed further accretion of over US $ 1.4 billion, mainly due to inflows and dollar revaluation, to take the Forex reserves past US $ 98.9 billion.

The Forex reserves witnessed total inflows of over US $ 24 billion since March 28, 2003.