If you are an NRI with dollar savings in a US bank account, the Reserve Bank of India has opened a new window for you that you must know about. For the next
three months, Indian banks are likely to offer you 5.5 percent to 7 percent interest per annum on dollar fixed deposits, under the Foreign Currency Non-Resident FCNR(B) scheme. The facility comes into effect immediately and will remain open up to October 16, 2026 for deposits mobilised till September 30. The detailed guidelines published by the RBI suggest that the central bank has allowed banks to mobilise deposits in any freely convertible currency, however the swap facility will be available in US dollars only. The underlying deposits will have a lock-in period of one yeaar and the swap facility with the RBI cannot be cancelled. It is also mentioned that existing restrictions on banks issuing non-fund based facilities assuring redemption or repayment of funds would not apply to these deposits. Geopolitical uncertainty due to the West Asia war has led to an over 50 percent spike in oil prices since the war began, persistent weakness in the rupee and India's forex reserves have slipped to around 682 billion dollars versus 728 billion dollars in February. NRI dollar deposit inflows which were 7 billion dollars in FY25 have also plunged to less than 1 billion dollars in FY26. The last time the Reserve Bank of India implemented such a scheme like this was in 2013, when the currency crisis led to (the RBI Governor at the time) Raghuram Rajan making use of the same measure and the window had raised around 34 billion dollars from the NRI community in weeks, the rupee had stabilised and RBI's reserves had also increased. Global brokerage firm Jefferies believes the RBI’s FCNR-B measures is likely to attract inflows worth 50-70 billion dollars, the key attraction, Jefferies notes, would be the ability to use leverage under the new framework.
