MUMBAI: After five consecutive sessions of losses, the Indian rupee on Friday strengthened against the dollar as the local equity markets opened higher.
Traders are cautious ahead of the US job report data, which is due later today. Earlier, the Fed Reserve said that it won’t tighten policy until it is “reasonably confident” that inflation will return to its target and the labour market will improve further, Bloomberg reported.
The local unit opened at 64.12 per dollar and touched a high of 64. At 9.10am, the home currency was trading at 64.13, up 0.17% from its previous close of 64.24.
The Sensex rose 0.81% or 216 points to 26,815.43 points. Since 13 April, the local equity markets have fallen by over 2,200 points on the expectation of weak monsoon, muted earnings and threat of minimum alternate tax on foreign funds. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold $2.08 billion in equity markets in the last 13 out of 14 sessions, except on 21 April when they bought $2.6 billion.
Most Asian currencies were trading lower. Malaysian ringgit was down 0.4%, South Korean won was down 0.18%, Japanese yen was down 0.17%, Thai baht was down 0.13% and Indonesian rupiah was down 0.11%.
