India's foreign exchange reserves rose to $100.59 billion in the week ended December 26 from $100.04 billion the previous week, according to the Reserve Bank of India's weekly statistical supplement released in Mumbai on Saturday.

This rise has been less compared to previous three weeks when the foreign exchange reserves had swelled by more than $1 billion each week.

The foreign currency assets increased by $541 million to $96.549 billion, it said.

During October-December, the government has prepaid a portion of bilateral foreign currency loans amounting to $576.84 million [Rs 2,615.98 crore (Rs 26.16 billion)] and currency pool loans of World Bank aggregating $1,437.05 million [Rs 6,517 crore (Rs 65.17 billion)] taking into account the strong foreign exchange reserves and soft interest rates in the domestic market.

The government has also decided to prepay some more bilateral foreign currency loans (from Italy) amounting to $93.61 million by purchasing the foreign currency from the RBI at the prevailing exchange rate.

RBI said the gold and special drawing rights remained unchanged at $4.038 billion and three million, respectively.

Loans and advances to central government had a nil balance while that to state governments rose by Rs 1,470 crore (Rs 14.70 billion) to Rs 6,786 crore (Rs 67.86 billion) in the week ended December 26.