Friday 26 / April / 2024
Muscat: The value of a single Omani rial reached a high of INR180.50, early on Monday morning, exchange houses confirmed. However, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) intervened and the currency has stabilised at INR180.35 per rial.
Similarly, the value of the rupee against the US dollar had been $69.62, earlier in the day and came down to $69.45, later.
Foreign exchange observers put the rupee crash down to a international factors. "It has primarily to do with the crash of the Turkish lira and Turkey's tensions with America over various reasons. The lira dropped 11 per cent, recently. Strengthening of the US dollar has been a trend as well. The result is that all emerging currencies are losing value. Be it the lira, Indian rupee, Euro, pound-sterling, they've all been hit.
"Indian currency hitting the mark of INR180.50 and then coming back slightly down to INR180.35 has been quite dramatic. The RBI intervening now won't help much, since the rupee fall has been due to international reasons outside their control," Global Exchange CEO Madhusudhan said.
Notably, the US President recently announced on Twitter that he would impose higher tariffs on imports from Turkey, mainly 20 per cent duty on aluminium and 50 per cent on steel. Relations between Turkey and America have been frosty over sundry international issues.
'Remittances might rise marginally'
The exchange house CEO said that remittances from Oman to India were likely to rise marginally in the coming days. "I say remittances will rise marginally because it will mostly be blue collar workers, who will try to take advantage of the favourable exchange rate in such moments," Madhusudhan added.
Moreover, Madhusudhan said that given the international crises, the value of the rupee was expected to decline further.
"When the value of rupee drops, trade deficit widens and the value of the currency declines further. It is a vicious cycle. India is heavily dependent on import of oil and electronic goods. This will fuel inflation as well," he said.
