Re slides, 57 a dollar

The rupee breached the 57-mark against the dollar on Thursday, hitting a one-year low but managed to recover due to dollar selling by exporters and some banks towards the end and closed at 56.84, a fresh 11-month level.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram, however, said there was no cause for alarm. The rupee had touched a record low of 57.32 in June last year.

Founder and CEO of India Forex Advisors, Abhishek Goenka said: “Heavy dollar demand and weakness in domestic equity markets added pressure on the rupee. We continue to hold a bearish outlook on the rupee and see it breaching the all time low of 57.33 levels very soon.”

Another analyst at Kotak Securities, Shrikant Chouhan said: “We are of the view that before heading towards 57.50, which is our medium term target, the rupee should strengthen tao 56.20. If it tests 56.20 without any intervention from the RBI then we may expect a quick bounce back towards 57 or 57.50 levels. In case if the RBI intervenes then in worst case scenario dollar versus rupee may strengthen to 55.80 and that should be the lower boundary for it for the current month.”