The country, a chronic borrower from the International Monetary Fund, became a creditor to the multilateral institution in May on the basis of its strong balance of payments and foreign exchange reserves position.

India saw its foreign exchange reserves skyrocket to an all-time high of $100.048 billion on December 19, on the back of steady trade inflows and private remittances, strong foreign direct investment and revaluation gains due to the dollar's weakness.

Creditably, India achieved the historic high despite having made a prepayment of $5 billion of external debt during 2003, $5.5 billion outflow for redemption of Resurgent India Bonds, and a contribution of $498 million to the International Monetary Fund.

India has joined China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea who also have forex reserves in excess of $100 billion.

Global credit rating agency Standard and Poor's raised India's foreign currency rating outlook to stable from negative during the year, while the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said India's GDP would grow at 7 percent this year.

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