BENGALURU, May 3 (Reuters) – The Indian rupee will hew a close path to the U.S. dollar over the coming three months as regular interventions from the Reserve Bank of India keeps the currency on a tight leash, a Reuters poll of analysts found.
The RBI has kept the rupee in a narrow range against the dollar and is only down about 0.3% this year unlike most of its Asian peers which have weakened a lot more.
“Given the heavy-handed nature of the RBI’s intervention, we expect volatility to remain contained. We may see the RBI put a firm floor under the USD/INR pair,” said Abhishek Goenka of India Forex and Asset Management.
Goenka added: “the Fed rate hikes getting pushed out on the stronger U.S. data seems to already be in the price.”
The rupee , trading around 83.47/$ on Thursday, was forecast to change hands about that level in a month and then strengthen to 83.29/$ in three months, the April 29-May 2 Reuters poll of 46 foreign exchange analysts showed.
The currency was forecast to gain around 0.6% to 82.95/$ in six months and 1.0% to 82.60/$ in a year.
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Reporting by Milounee Purohit; Polling by Veronica Khongwir and Anant Chandak; Editing by Hari Kishan and Toby Chopra
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