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Rupee loses marginal ground

The Interbank Foreign Exchange market discounted the Reserve Bank of India's slack season credit policy as the Indian rupee slightly lowered against the U S greenback in an extremely quiet trading.

The currency opened at 39.7350/7450, remained stagnant till the end of the day, thus registering a marginal drop against the previous day's close of 39.72/73 per dollar.

''Nothing significant emerged from the policy announcement. Forex market witnessed a kneejerk paying pressure in the forward segment, but premiums reversed the trend immediately after RBI chief Jalan said the CRR will cut whenever liquidity crisis erupts," said A K Amin, chief forex dealer at the Development Credit Bank Limited.

Amin said the spot rupee remained unmoved after the announcement. He expects the premia levels to remain soft in line with the easy money policy measures which the RBI announced.

The six month annualised premium was quoted at 6.84 per cent while the yearly premium was at 7.49 per cent.

In the swaps, cash/spot business was done between 0.25 and 0.50 paise premium. The monthwise premia in paise were May 8-10, June 27-29, July 50-52, August 72-75, September 111-116, October 132-136, November 156-163 and December 185-190.

In cross currency deals, pound sterling was traded at Rs 66.29, deutsche mark between Rs 22.15 and Rs 22.10 and Japanese yen between Rs 30.02 and Rs 30.04.

The RBI fixed the reference rate at 39.75 as against Monday's 39.71.

UNI