Rupee appreciates substantially on RBI’s intervention

Indian rupee extended its previous session’s jubilant mood on Friday on fresh selling of dollars after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed restrictions on forward trading and banks’ exposure to the forex market to check the slide of the domestic currency. In addition, dollar weakness overseas also supported rupee’s rise. However, the Indian currency has eked out gains tracing local equities, which cooled off from high point of day post RBI’s mid-quarterly policy announcement.

 

Much against the street’s delight, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its mid-quarterly monetary policy review, left Cash reserve rates (CRR) unchanged at 6%. However, the current repo and reverse repo rates of 8.50% and 7.50% respectively have also been retained by India’s central bank.

 

On the global front, euro was poised to end its worst week in over a month on an upbeat note, elevated by broad short-covering in riskier assets after a well-bid Spanish bond sale and solid US economic data

 

The partially convertible currency is currently trading at 52.83, stronger by 84 paise from its previous close of 53.67 on Thursday. It has touched a high and low of 52.92 and 52.21 respectively.  The Reserve Bank of India's reference rate for the dollar stood at Rs 54.23 and for Euro it stood at 70.46 on December 15, 2011. While, the RBI's reference rate for the Yen stood at 69.49 and the reference rate for the Great Britain Pound (GBP) stood at 83.7667. The reference rates are based on 12 noon rates of a few select banks in Mumbai.