Rupee falls to near 43/dlr after inflation

Font Size -

Reuters

Posted online: Friday , May 16, 2008 at 02:48:39
Updated: Friday , May 16, 2008 at 02:48:39

Mumbai, May 16: The Indian rupee fell to a 13-month low on Friday after data showing inflation at a new 3-½ year high heightened worries about slowing growth, record oil prices and the risk of foreign investors withdrawing funds.

At 2:18 p.m., the partially convertible rupee was at 42.81/82 per dollar, off an intraday low of 42.92, which was its weakest since April 12, 2007, according to Reuters data. The rupee had closed at 42.75/76 on Thursday.

At its low, the rupee was down 8.2 percent in 2008. It had risen more than 12 percent against the dollar in 2007.

"Inflation hit sentiment hard. Particularly, the major revision for March's inflation number," a senior dealer with a foreign bank said.

"That raised worries about FIIs pulling money from the stock market because high inflation is bad news for the economy," he added, referring to foreign institutional investors.

Data on Friday showed annual inflation at 7.83 percent on May 3, a 3-½ year high, and the provisional rate for March 8 was revised up to 7.78 percent from 5.92 percent.

Oil, India's biggest import, hit record highs near $127 a barrel this week, raising the risk of the trade deficit widening. India imports more than two-thirds of its oil needs, and crude refiners are the biggest buyers of dollars.

Foreign investment flows are a key influence on the rupee. Overseas funds have sold a net $2.9 billion of Indian equities so far in 2008, a sharp turnaround from record net purchases of $17.4 billion last year.

Bookmark this Page

What is this?

Digg

On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

del.icio.us

At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

Reddit

Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Digg

My Yahoo

Fark

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Rate this Article

Rating

Post Comments

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*
Message*	Characters remaining

TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.