The Indian rupee inched up for a third straight session on Friday, helped by a 1.9 percent rise in domestic shares, but dollar demand from oil refiners to meet import commitments capped the rise. The partially convertible rupee closed at 48.90/91 per dollar, marginally stronger than Thursday's close of 48.92/93. On Wednesday, the rupee had fallen to 49.21, its lowest since July 13.
Despite gaining for the past three days, the rupee fell 0.5 percent over the week. "There were not many flows seen in the market today, which kept the rupee ranged. Next week, some Oil India initial public offer-related flows are expected, so the upside for the dollar-rupee looks capped," said Ashtosh Raina, head of foreign exchange trading at HDFC Bank.
India's foreign exchange reserves rose to $276.4 billion as on August 28 from $272 billion a week earlier, and the central bank said it received allocation of equivalent of $4.8 billion worth of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from the International Monetary Fund during the week.
One-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were quoting at 48.96/49.06, weaker than the onshore spot rate. In the currency futures market, the most traded near-month contracts on the National Stock Exchange and MCX-SX both closed at 48.95 each, with the total traded volume on the two exchanges at about an average $1.6 billion.
Comments
Comments are closed.