The Indian rupee weakened on Monday as the dollar rose against a host of currencies, with heavy demand for the US unit from local oil refiners adding to the downward pressure. The partially convertible rupee ended at 43.79/80 per dollar, 0.8 percent weaker than Friday's close of 43.425/435. It hit a 17-month low of 43.87 last week.
The rupee has shed 2.8 percent in August, taking its losses to 10 percent so far in 2008. "Rupee depreciated due to the dollar's recovery against majors and other Asian currencies. There was also some dollar demand from oil companies and squaring of short speculative dollar positions", said L. Subramanian, the chief dealer with ICICI Bank.