NEW DELHI – India was taken to surprise upon entry on the US Treasury’scurrency watchlist last week, however it can get yet another blow byfurther labelled as manipulator of the rupee.

The Treasury cited India’s “significant” trade surplus with the US andincreased purchases of foreign currency last year as reasons for increasedscrutiny of the Asian economy. Taiwan and Thailand, both of whom runsignificant current account surpluses and whose central banks have activelyintervened in currency markets, weren’t added to the list.

A spokesman for the Reserve Bank of India declined to comment on theTreasury report, which identifies three criteria to label a country as acurrency manipulator: a bilateral trade surplus of at least $20 billion, acurrent account surplus of 3% of gross domestic product or more, andforeign exchange intervention of at least 2% of GDP in the past year.

“There is very little chance that India will meet all three criteria and becalled a manipulator, as it has persistently been running current accountdeficits since 2005,” Khoon Goh, head of Asian research at Australia & NewZealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore, wrote in a note on Monday.