Govt taking measures to arrest rupee fall: Ahluwalia

13 Jun 2013 Evaluate

Attributing the rupee's decline to the surge in dollar demand in international markets, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said that the government has been taking steps to deal with the economic situation and hoped that forex market will stabilize in coming days. Ahluwalia said that rupee is falling in tandem with all emerging market economies because of their high current account deficit. The rupee had touched an all-time intra-day low of 58.98 recently on account of strong dollar demand in international market. Presently dollar is appreciating against all the currencies across the world and the rupee has not weakened as much as some of its peers with South African currency depreciating by around 11 per cent.

Currently, to check the rupee depreciation, the RBI intervened which suggests that it is feeling that market pressures were pushing the currency to an unnecessarily low point. It was learnt that the central bank asked some state owned banks to sell US dollars when the local unit was trading at 58.95/$. Accordingly, banks include Union Bank of India, Canara Bank, SBI , Syndicate Bank and others have sold the greenback to tune of $4-5 billion.   

The rupee is depreciating mainly due to the high CAD, which widened on account of rising gold import and high crude oil prices. Further, persistent dollar demand from importers and banks also added to the fall in rupee value. In May, India’s gold imports touched 162 tonnes, while in April, it was around 100-120 tonnes, higher than the average monthly import level of 70-80 tonnes. The CAD widened to a record high of 6.7% in the third quarter of FY13. 

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