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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Weakening Indian Rupee -and Reason behind it

It has been noticed that indian national rupee(INR) is weakening and it is also clear that US dollar is weakening too!! so why is INR weakening????

This question might be arising in every economist mind and they might not be sure why there is decline in value of indian rupee??

Indian economy grew at nearly 10% last fiscal year but the growth rate of indian economy projected for this fiscal year would never be met and finance minister has to rethink about the growth rate percentage which he kept in mind while making the Union finance budget for year 2008-09 in february this year.

Last year the foreign direct investments(FDI) in India crossed every target and was in huge amounts, US $ was flowing into indian subcontinent as water due to which US $ was wandering at under 40 INR mark till february 2008. this was the time when USA was considering india as a potential country . Since at that time US $ was coming to india itself so the reserve bank of India(RBI) stopped purchasing the US $ to keep $ buffer (every country keeps US $ into it's buffer for controlling the economic conditions of that particular country.


When US companies felt that there were few countries in Asia and Africa which offered better oppurtunities then india so the companies which had invested in india started to take out their money for investing in other countries due to this action of the US companies the US$ inflow into india started declining and Indian rupee started weakening.


Now RBi had to come into action and had to purchase US $ on it's own for maintaining the buffer level of US $ in Indian subcontinent but this action of RBI can never match to the rate when US $ were being invested in Indian subcontinent by US companies directly so the INR started weakening as the reserve US $ in RBI's buffer declined and rupee weakened further.


Now indian rupee can become strong only in case the investment from US companies start pouring into india again at the same rate at which it was in previous fiscal years. Moreover tremendous increase in crude oil prices are also weakening the india rupee further as the oil import bill by indian companies has increased almost 50% and all are incurring losses.


We should also be prepared for huge rise in petrol and diesel retail prices in future , the rise in petrol would have been in order of INR 10/litre for the government if government passed whole burden onto the general population and similar increase would be there in case of prices of diesel. and it is evident that inflation would also increase further in coming future.

So government has increased commision on filling stations by INR 29/Kilolitre for petrol and INR 31/Kilolitre for diesel however retail prices has increased by INR 0.04 / litre so people have been effected to less extent with rise in petrol/diesel prices . However crude oil prices will touch $200 /barrel mark in this year itself so further rise in petrol and diesel prices is on the cards and inflation will rise further in near future.

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