Indian rupee weakens to hit record low hurt by weak Asia FX

The Indian rupee weakened to all-time low on Tuesday, pressured by a decline in its Asian peers, with likely intervention from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) preventing a sharp fall in the currency, traders said.

The rupee slipped to a record low of 83.8575, eclipsing its previous lifetime low of 83.8450 hit on Monday.

Asian currencies were mostly down between 0.1% and 0.9%, while the dollar index nudged higher to 102.9.


The RBI is likely to keep a "firm grip" on the rupee and not allow it to weaken more than 8-10 paisa on Tuesday, a foreign exchange trader at a state-run bank said.

The local currency may continue to encounter headwinds in the near-term due to outflows from local equities and some unwinding of carry trades that used the Chinese yuan to fund long bets on the rupee, traders said. (Reporting by Jaspreet Kalra; Editing by Savio D'Souza)