The Indian rupee on Tuesday weakened past the 64 mark against the dollar ahead of the Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data due after 5.30pm.
The local unit opened at 64.12 per dollar and touched a low of 64.16 a dollar. At 9.10am, the currency was trading at 64.13, down 0.42% from its previous close of 63.86.
The Sensex fell 0.02% or 4.39 points to 27,502.91 points. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have sold $2.34 billion in equity markets in the last 15 out of 16 sessions, except on 21 April when they bought $2.6 billion.
In May so far, FIIs sold $942.41 million in debt and $606.35 million in equity. A Bloomberg poll of 35 analysts estimates that IIP will be at 3% in March as compared with 5% in February.
CPI is expected to go up to 4.9% in April from a year earlier, according to the median estimate of 35 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Traders expect that the slowing of retail inflation may boost the possibility of the third rate cut this year by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The yield on India’s 10-year benchmark bond was trading at 7.927% compared with its Monday’s close of 7.889%. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Since the beginning of this year, the rupee has lost 1.7%, while FIIs have bought $6.61 billion from local equity and $6.51 billion from bond markets.
Most of the Asian currencies were trading lower. Malaysian ringgit was down 0.53%, South Korean won was down 0.33%, Indonesian rupiah was down 0.25%, Philippines peso was down 0.2%, Singapore dollar and Thai baht were down 0.1% each, and Japanese yen was down 0.08%.
The dollar index, which measures the US currency’s strength against major currencies, was trading at 94.966, down 0.05% from its previous close of 95.011.
Source:livemint.com
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