Indian rupee weakens

The Indian rupee weakened on Thursday tracking losses in the domestic sharemarket but dollar demand from oil firms was largely met by supply from exporters, preventing a further slide. "The rupee weakened on the back of the stock market fall but demand from oil was mostly met by exporters. The next key trigger to watch out for now will be the budget later this month," said N.S. Venkatesh, treasurer at IDBI Bank.
The partially convertible rupee closed at 53.92/93 per dollar versus its previous close of 53.82/83. In the offshore non-deliverable forwards the one-month contract was at 54.19, while the three-month was at 54.78. In the currency futures market, the most-traded near-month dollar/rupee contract on the National Stock Exchange, the MCX-SX and the United Stock Exchange all closed at around 54.05 with total traded volume of $4.8 billion.