The Indian rupee posted its first gain against the dollar in four sessions on Thursday, recovering from a new record low earlier in the session, after the central bank governor did not rule out selling dollars directly to oil importers.
The rupee also gained as traders saw sporadic intervention from the Reserve Bank of India, while other traders cited dollar selling by custodian banks as well as exporters converting their foreign currency holdings on the last day of the two-week deadline mandated recently by the central bank.
The rupee closed at 55.65/66 per dollar after hitting a record low of 56.40 hit earlier in the session. The pair had closed Wednesday at 55.9950/56.0050 on Wednesday. The rupee has shed 12.7 percent against the dollar since its 2012 peak in early February and is the worst performer in Asia so far this year.
The one-month offshore non-deliverable forward rates were quoted at 56.05 while the three-month NDF was at 56.82. In the currency futures market, the most-traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange, the MCX-SX and the United Stock Exchange all ended around 55.72 on a total volume of $6.7 billion.