MUMBAI: The Indian rupee ended largely unchanged against the dollar after a choppy session on Friday, as weakness in regional currencies largely offset the unwinding of long dollar positions, but the currency posted its best week in the last 11 on debt inflows.
This was also the fourth weekly gain in the last five weeks.
The rupee climbed to 94.21 early in the session as long dollar positions were unwound, but surrendered gains later as the dollar strengthened and index-rebalancing outflows hit the currency. It ended little changed at 94.32 per dollar.
For the week, the rupee rose 0.83 percent, marking its best performance since week ended April 3.
“The recent RBI measures together with favorable oil prices on account of de-escalation of Middle East concerns kept the local unit in positive territory even after sizeable dollar strength today,” said Dhaval Shah, founder and managing director, De-Risk Forex Consultancy.
“This suggests the bias for rupee has changed and we continue with our previous forecast of 93.50.”
The rupee has been on a rising trend after the Reserve Bank of India announced dollar-attracting measures two weeks ago.
“RBI absorbing hedging cost to attract foreign currency deposits and support external borrowing with the concessional FX facility appear most effective in the near term to lend support to the rupee,” said Clifford Lau, hard- and local-currency portfolio manager on the emerging markets debt team at William Blair Investment Management. Robust foreign inflows into Indian government securities and a slump in oil prices since then have also worked in favour of the local currency, but the one-way move was challenged by a resurgent dollar, an uptick in oil and renewed US rate-hike expectations on Friday.
The Fed’s latest policy meeting, the first under new Chair Kevin Warsh, revived expectations of further rate increases and drove the dollar index to a one-year high.
Brent crude inched up after US Vice President JD Vance withdrew from a planned meeting with Iranian negotiators on Friday to begin discussions on implementing the 14-point agreement.
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