U.S. currency watchlist an intrusion: official

‘Putting India under scanner invasion into central banks’ policy space’

Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan on Tuesday questioned the rationale behind the U.S. government’s decision to put India in the watchlist for currency manipulators, and said the list constituted an intrusion into the policy space needed by central banks around the world to meet their mandates. The U.S. Treasury Department had recently retained India in a watchlist for currency manipulators submitted to the U.S. Congress, citing higher dollar purchases (close to 5% of the gross domestic product) by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Another trigger for the inclusion in the currency watchlist is a trade surplus of $20 billion or more. India’s trade surplus with the U.S. grew by about $5 billion to $23 billion in 2020-21 from around $18 billion in the previous fiscal year as imports fell more sharply than exports in the COVID-affected year.