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Rupee up one paise, 42.50/51

The rupee edged up slightly by one paise against the US dollar in a very quiet interbank foreign exchange market today.

Opening steady at 42.50/52, the rupee moved in a narrow range of four paise between 42.50 and 42.54 during the day with moderate dollar demand and matching supply, before closing slightly higher at 42.50/51 against 42.51/53 on the last working day.

Dealers said there was not much demand for the US currency. The moderate dollar selling by banks and corporates, helped the rupee to remain almost steady.

The forward premiums also came down slightly on better receiving by the Reserve Bank of India and nominal import booking. The sixth-month and yearly annualised premiums were quoted lower by 7.56 per cent and 8.56 per cent respectively.

The cash/spot businesses were being conducted between 0.50 and 0.75 paise premium while cash/tom was done between level to 0.25 paise. The month-wise premiums in paise were: July 1-3, August 20-23, September 45-45, October 76-79, November 107-110, December 138-141, January 168-172, February 198-202 and March 231-235.

The RBI has fixed the reference rate for US dollar at Rs 42.51 against Rs 42.56 the previous day. In the overseas market, pound sterling and deutsche mark remained almost steady against US dollar while Japanese yen strengthened slightly. The rupee remained steady against sterling and dm and weakened a bit against yen and quoted Rs 79.01 for sterling, Rs 23.87 for dm and Rs 30.61 for yen.

UNI