The Indian rupee closed stronger on Tuesday, the first trading day of the new fiscal year, helped by an improvement in global risk appetite that pushed local stocks higher, while demand for dollars from oil importers pulled it back from a two-week high.
The rupee ended at 50.6950/7050 to the dollar after touching 50.51, a level last seen on March 21, according to Thomson Reuters data. It closed at 50.87/88 on Friday, the last day of the fiscal year 2011/12 during which it hit a record low of 54.30 on December 15.
The Indian foreign exchange market was shut on Monday for the annual closing of bank accounts. "Stronger Asian currencies, and positive equities pushed the rupee higher, and the dollar was weaker against the major currencies, which also helped," said Hemal Doshi, chief financial strategist at Geojit Comtrade. The one-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were at 51.08. In the currency futures market, the most-traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange, the MCX-SX and on the United Stock Exchange all ended around 50.9, on a combined volume of $3.4 billion.
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