MUMBAI: The Indian government bought back 88 billion rupees ($1.42 billion) of bonds maturing in the fiscal years 2015/16 and 2016/17 and sold an equivalent amount of bonds maturing in 2026/27, 2030/31, the central bank said in a release on Monday.

The so-called bond switch programme is being conducted by the government to reduce the burden of bunched-up bond redemptions in the short term. The switch was done on Feb. 18 with a commercial bank, the Reserve Bank of India said.

The 2014/15 budget had provided for 500 billion rupees of bond switches, of which the government has bought back 188 billion rupees of bonds in the current financial year ending in March, the RBI said.

Copyright Reuters, 2015