Rupee drifts lower on cautious optimism ahead of EU summit

07 Dec 2011 Evaluate

Indian rupee drifted lower for second consecutive session on Wednesday as traders juggled with oil importer demand for American green back amidst cautious optimism over concrete steps to resolve the euro regions’ debt crisis from Friday's European summit. However, hopes that threat of mass credit rating downgrades will pressurize European leaders to come up with a convincing framework for resolving the euro zone debt crisis, besides boosting the spirit of common currency along with that of local equities, also capped the losses of Indian currency. At the summit on Thursday and Friday, France and Germany are expected to try to force changes to EU rules to penalize countries that exceed deficit targets in hopes of restoring market confidence. A Financial Times report stated that European leaders will discuss boosting the firepower of the euro zone's rescue fund at the summit.

Back on the home turf, some market participants were also of the view that the central bank's assurance of preventing the rupee from falling sharply by intervening in the forex market would also prevents any sharp decline in the local currency.

The partially convertible currency is currently trading at 51.45, weaker by 24 paise from its previous close of 51.21 on Monday. It has touched a high and low of 51.52 and 51.36 respectively. The Reserve Bank of India's reference rate for the dollar stood at Rs 51.39 and for Euro it stood at 68.92 on December 5, 2011. While, the RBI's reference rate for the Yen stood at 65.91 and the reference rate for the Great Britain Pound (GBP) stood at 80.2031. The reference rates are based on 12 noon rates of a few select banks in Mumbai.

Date1US$1GBP
December 5, 201151.39 80.2031
December 2, 201151.35 80.5050

RBI-Reference Rate

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