MUMBAI – The Indian rupee gained on Friday as the dollar slipped on concerns about the U.S. fiscal outlook, with markets digesting the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tax-cut bill, which is projected to add to the U.S. debt pile.
Emerging market currencies rose across the board, with Asian currencies up between 0.1% to 0.7%.
The rupee rose 0.2% to 85.83 as of 10:25 a.m. IST on Friday, recovering after slipping past the 86/dollar level for the first time in over a month on Thursday.
The South Asian currency has broadly underperformed its emerging market peers so far in May, with traders citing persistent dollar demand from corporate payments and foreign portfolio outflows.
Foreign portfolio investors sold Indian shares worth about $586 million on Thursday, as per provisional data, the third such session of selling in four days. Overseas investors were also net sellers of index-linked Indian bonds on Thursday.
The rupee was aided by dollar offers from local private and a few foreign banks early on Friday but could face resistance around the 85.75 level while finding support near 86.20, a foreign exchange trader at a mid-sized Mumbai bank said.
The dollar index, meanwhile, was down 0.2% at 99.6 while U.S. bond yields edged lower in Asia trading.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield had climbed to a three-month peak of 4.62% as a worsening fiscal outlook for the United States raised concerns about demand for U.S. government debt.
While India’s sovereign bonds have witnessed some selling pressure due to the rise in U.S. bond yields, expectations of monetary policy easing have contained the pressure.
Announcement of the central bank’s dividend transfer to the government will be in focus on Friday.
The Reserve Bank of India’s earnings for the previous fiscal “are likely to have a received a hand from a significant increase in FX dollar sales to the tune of ~$400 billion, which is more than double of FY24, in addition to higher interest income from government securities,” DBS said in a note.
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