Rupee dips 9 paise to 79.03 against opening trade

The rupee declined 9 paise to 79.03 against the opening trade on Monday, as persistent foreign funds outflows weighed on investor sentiments.

The weakness of crude oil prices is supporting the local unit, according to traders.

They said that appreciation bias could be limited due to inflation and growth worries in India and globally.

The rupee fell to 79.03 at the interbank foreign exchange, which opened at 78.97 against the US dollar, and fell to 79.03, registering a decline of 9 paise over the last close.

Cash demand will not be available due to the fact that the rupee closed at 78.94 in the previous session on Friday. We could see some lower levels for the pair at 78.80. Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head of Treasury, Finrex Treasury AdvisorsTreasury Advisors said that importers should take advantage of the dips and buy their next 10 -- 15 days of exposures, and exporters could sell the upticks towards 79.20 for near-term exposures.

On the domestic equity market, the Sensex traded 20.63 points or 0.04 per cent lower at 52,887. The NSE Nifty fell 22.65 points or 0.14 per cent to 15,729. The dollar index, which gauges the strength of the dollar against a basket of six currencies, was at 105.14.

The global oil benchmark Brent crude futures fell 0.08 per cent to USD 111.54 per barrel.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers on Friday as they offloaded shares worth Rs 2,324. According to exchange data, 74 crore were reported to have been generated.

The country's foreign exchange reserves went up by USD 2.734 billion to USD 593.323 billion for the week ended June 24 due to a surge in core currency assets, according to the Reserve Bank of India RBI on Friday.