India Panics (Again): Central Bank Takes Over The Country's Oil Dollar Bill... And Dusts Off April's Capital Controls

When a central bank starts buying a country's oil for it, the currency is no longer the problem. It's the symptom.

That is the takeaway from this weekend's package of rupee-defense measures from the Reserve Bank of India, as dissected by Goldman's EM MarketStrats desk (Rishi Radia and Lu Sun) in "India: RBI steps up INR defence" (available to pro subs). The headline item is simple and remarkable:

"US$120bn Annually": The Oil Bill Moves Onto The Balance Sheet