The government today said it has taken a number of steps to augment the supply of foreign exchange to stem decline of rupee and foreign direct investment, FDI for infrastructure development. In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said these steps include liberalization of External Commercial Borrowings ECB policy and portfolio investment norms. He said a number of measures have been taken to improve access to cooperate bond market through infrastructure Debt Funds. The Reserve Bank of India has also takeninitiatives to curb speculations in the foreign exchange market. Other measures include raising of NRI deposit interest rates, easing availability of export credit and stipulation that 50 percent of balances in the Exchange Earner's Foreign Currency, EEFC account to be converted into rupee balances. Mr. Mukherjee said, in his budgetspeech 2012-13, he had proposed increase in basic custom duty on standard gold bars, gold coins of purity exceeding 99.5 percent and platinum to two percent to four percent which will lower the impact of gold import on current account deficit. In addition to these measures,the Finance Minister said, a new National Manufacturing Policy has been announced with the objective of raising, within a decade, the share of manufacturing in GDP to 25 percent and creation of 10 crore jobs and a Foreign Trade Policy to enhance exports to500 billion US dollars by 2013-14.