India needs foreign exchange buffer reserves to insulate itself from exchange rate volatility as we have "no friends" for swap lines and Japan was the only country that helped during the taper tantrum in 2013, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday.
"We need this (foreign exchange) reserve buffer to insulate ourselves because we have no friends. Even the European Union (EU) went to get swap lines from the Federal Reserve.
"We asked for swap lines, that is on public record, we did not get them. Only country who helped us during the taper tantrum was Japan," he said
According to RBI data, the country's foreign exchange reserves swelled by $1.013 billion to touch a life time high of $610.012 billion in the week ended July 2.
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