Rupee opens marginally higher at 66.47/$

On the domestic front, India's GDP rose 7.4 % during the second quarter of the fiscal year 2015‐16, better than the 7% growth registered during the prior quarter.

The Indian rupee opened marginally higher by 2 paise at 66.47/$ in early trade on Wednesday. On the domestic front, India's GDP rose 7.4 % during the second quarter of the fiscal year 2015‐16, better than the 7% growth registered during the prior quarter. Meanwhile, India's core sector output during October grew 3.2%, in line with the reading during the previous month. However, the growth number was well below the reading of 9% during October last year. On positive front, there has been some improvement in coal and cement output and electricity generation.

On monetary policy front, RBI kept the repo rate and CRR unchanged at 6.75% and 4% respectively. The policy commentary seems to suggest that pause could continue in the first meeting of 2016 (in February) also given that key influencers for incremental rate downshift would unfold over the coming few months. While remaining confident about achieving the 6% CPI target of January 2016, the central bank is cautious about any spike in food inflation (due to uncertainty over rabi output) and recent uptick seen in the core index. RBI hopes that impact of the seventh pay commission would be largely offset by the pursued fiscal consolidation the government.


The currency touched a high and low of 66.75 and 67.82 respectively. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) reference rate for the dollar stood at 66.51 and for Euro stood at 70.43 on December 01, 2015. While, the RBI’s reference rate for the Yen stood at 54.13, the reference rate for the Great Britain Pound (GBP) stood at 100.4355.