The Indian rupee logged its second straight weekly loss in the new fiscal year that began on April 1, giving up most of its intraday gains on Friday, dragged by a sharp fall in local shares and strong dollar demand from oil importers. However, dollar sales by a few exporters and possibly some foreign banks for custodial flows offered some solace for the rupee, traders said.
The rupee ended at 51.3050 to the dollar, after hitting a high of 51.29 earlier. It closed at 51.580/585 on Thursday. In the week, the rupee fell 0.5 percent taking its retreat from the 2012 peak of 48.60 to 5.3 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed.
"Dollar buying from oil companies was there, as was the fall in euro and stocks to pressure rupee," said Ashtosh Raina, head of foreign currency trading at HDFC Bank. The one-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were at 51.65. 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 at around 51.47, on a total volume of $3.8 billion.