{"id":440234,"date":"2026-05-22T15:58:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T15:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/440234\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T15:58:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T15:58:18","slug":"rbi-helping-hand-muscles-breathing-room-for-rupee-cools-forward-premiums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/440234\/","title":{"rendered":"RBI helping hand muscles breathing room for rupee, cools forward premiums"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Indian rupee<\/a> rallied to close above the 96-per-dollar mark for the first time in a week on Friday, helped bythe central bank’s aggressive interventions to arrest the currency’s slide from 94.50 to nearly 97.<\/p>\n

The rupee closed at 95.69 per dollar, up 0.5% from its close in the previous \u200csession.<\/p>\n

The Reserve \u2060Bank of \u2060India sold $2 billion to $3 billion on Thursday and intervened in the markets again on Friday, according to bankers.<\/p>\n

Two state-run lenders were consistently selling dollars through Friday’s trading session, three traders told Reuters, adding that this marked a change from relatively subdued and intermittent activity in the earlier part of the week.<\/p>\n

“It seems the RBI’s intends to draw some version of a line-in-the-sand for rupee weakness<\/a>,” \u2060a senior \u200ctrader at a foreign bank said. The currency had weakened from 94.50 on May 8 to a record low of 96.96 \u2060on May 20.
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State-run banks were spotted conducting dollar-rupee buy\/sell swaps as well, most likely on behalf of the RBI, the bankers added. Dollar-rupee forward premiums fell as a result, with the 1-year implied yield down 6 basis points at 3.39%.
The central banks’ presence also ensured that the rupee was largely unfazed by a more than 2% rise in Brent crude prices<\/a> to $105 per barrel on Friday as \u200cinvestors doubted the prospect of a breakthrough in U.S.-Iran talks. “We continue to view the Indian Rupee as vulnerable across a range of scenarios on the Strait \u2060of Hormuz, with USD\/INR<\/a> likely moving towards 98.00 levels and even 100.00 is in sight if the conflict prolongs or escalates,” Michael Wan, senior currency analyst at MUFG said in a note.<\/p>\n

MUFG also expects the RBI to hike rates by 25 bps each in June and August, following a similar projection by Standard Chartered.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Asian currencies<\/a> were mostly weaker on the day, with losses led by a 0.6% fall in the Korean won. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Indian rupee rallied to close above the 96-per-dollar mark for the first time in a week on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[219391,173433,138,224817,219,3902,111,139,69,224816,6836,224815,3906],"class_list":["post-440234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asian-currencies","tag-brent-crude-prices","tag-business","tag-currency-intervention","tag-economy","tag-indian-rupee","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rate-hike-predictions","tag-reserve-bank-of-india","tag-rupee-weakness","tag-usd-inr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}