By: Shree1news, 04 JAN 2021
Indian rupee today jumped against towards the US dollar, tracking a broader weakness in dollar and higher domestic equity markets. Rupee rose to a four-month excessive of 72.84 towards the US dollar as in comparison with earlier close of 73.12. In the meantime domestic stock markets continued their record-breaking streak at present with Sensex hitting the 48,000 levels for first time.
Abhishek Goenka, founder and CEO of IFA Global, expects the positive momentum in rupee to proceed within the close to time period.
“In a major positive development, the Drug Controller General of India has cleared the Covishield vaccine (developed by Oxford University and Astra Zeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute of India) and Covaxin (developed by Bharat Biotech) for emergency use authorization in India,” he mentioned.
“In another encouraging development, GST collections for December came in at a record ₹1.15 lakh crore. It is encouraging to see the collections holding up and rising steadily even post the festive season. December trade deficit came in at $15.71 billion, again to pre-COVID levels which indicates that domestic consumption has recovered well.”
On the other hand, Mr Goenka mentioned, the developments on the global front although haven’t been encouraging with US continuing to document a surge in cases and deaths.
The major data to focus on this week would be the FOMC minutes late Wednesday and US December jobs data on Friday. Georgia Senate runoffs may also be closely tracked.
“The race is too near call and if Democrats manage to win both, the president, House and Senate would all be Democrat which would be negative for the Dollar. If however, Republicans win even one runoff, they’d retain control of the Senate. The Dollar could recoup some of it is recent losses in this case,” he mentioned.
The Indian rupee is likely to trade in a range of 72.80-73.20 levels in near term, says Amit Pabari, MD of CR Forex Advisors. “Domestically, sentiments remain boosted as DGCI has granted approval to AstraZeneca and Bharat Biotech for an emergency use of vaccine within the country enabling begin to an enormous immunization program in a week. Optimism on again of vaccine programs and consistent foreign fund inflows amid dollar uncertainty has its drive for rupee momentum on one side, whereas RBI tolerance for the appreciation in INR on different aspect. So far, the pair has respected 73.00 levels for previous couple of months as a consequence of RBI’s active intervention. If RBI will get lenient because the previous week, rupee shall transfer near 72.75 levels that have been last seen in September. However, the strength appears to be short lived considering the widening fiscal deficit and expectations of a growth centric budget that would further aggravate the risk of fiscal slippage for the upcoming year.”