New Delhi: With spurt in overseas borrowings by corporates and rupee appreciation against major currencies, India’s external debt has gone up by $31.8 billion in first nine months of the fiscal to $201.4 billion (about Rs7,94,017 crore).

It implies that with total population of about 110 crore, per capita debt on each Indian stood at Rs7,218.

According to a Finance Ministry statement, the external debt stood at $169.7 billion at end-March 2007 and increased by $10.3 billion in the third quarter this fiscal.

In fact, the rupee appreciation led to rise in external debt by $6 billion dollars during April-December 2007.

The long term debt rose by $6.3 billion to $166.2 billion, while short-term debt increased by 4 billion dollars to $35.2 billion over the third quarter.

Amongst the components of long-term debt, which accounted for 82.6% of the total debt, commercial borrowings increased by $4.9 billion (9.4%) to $57 billion during the nine months.

The share of government debt in total external debt stood at 26.3% or $53 billion, while private debt was 73.7% or $148.5 billion.

The share of US dollar in the external debt portfolio continued to show an increasing trend going up to 54.5% at end-December 2007 from 52% at end-March 2007.

While NRI deposits declined by 1.5% at $43 billion, multilateral debt, bilateral debt and export credit increased marginally to reach $37.9 billion, $17.3 billion and $8.9 billion respectively at end-December.