The government will privately place bonds with the Reserve Bank of India to raise funds to repay some of its foreign debt ahead of schedule, a top central banker said on Thursday.

"It will be a private placement of bonds with the central bank," Rakesh Mohan, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.

The government plans to prepay loans worth $2.8 billion to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank by the end of March.

The government had said it will raise Rs 130 billion through bonds in the domestic market against the foreign exchange released by the central bank.

Mohan also said a possible war in Iraq was unlikely to affect the country's foreign exchange reserves which stood at record $72.4 billion on January 17.

He also said the central bank had no plans to cut its key short-term repo rate for now.