The Indian rupee climbed in late deals on Friday as exporters and a large corporate aggressively sold the dollar on the view that local unit was heading back towards near-decade highs hit earlier this month, traders said. The partially convertible rupee closed at 39.62/63 per dollar, strengthening from Thursday's close of 39.75/76.
It strengthened to 39.16 earlier this month, its highest since March 1998, but had since weakened under pressure from central bank intervention and foreign selling of local stocks. "For most of the afternoon the RBI did not intervene, and the market took that as an opportunity to push the (dollar/rupee) pair lower," said a dealer with a foreign bank, referring to the Reserve Bank of India.
"Barring a catastrophe, the flows are going to continue at a steady pace, so there's no real reason for people to be long on the dollar," the dealer added.