Indian rupee posts biggest weekly fall in nine weeks

Suspected dollar sales by the Reserve Bank of India helped the rupee recover all intraday losses on Friday but the currency still posted its biggest weekly fall in nine weeks. The rupee ended at 49.40/41 to the dollar after hitting a low of 49.76, a level not seen since January 30, according to Thomson Reuters data. The central bank likely sold dollars around this level, traders said.
The rupee closed at 49.4975/5075 on Thursday. For the week, the currency lost 1.45 percent, its biggest single-week drop since the week ended December 11. It was also the rupee's first weekly decline in six weeks. One-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were at 49.79. In the currency futures market, the most-traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange, the MCX-SX and the United Stock Exchange all ended around 49.60, on a total volume of $5.26 billion.