What it is
The currency of India. It can be exchanged freely for trade, but movements of capital are regulated, and a good deal of trading by people outside India takes place in offshore contracts that are settled in US dollars.
Who issues it
The Reserve Bank of India issues the rupee and sets the policy repo rate through its Monetary Policy Committee. It buys and sells foreign currency to keep the market orderly.
How it is commonly described
- Emerging market
- Issued by a developing economy; usually a thinner market, with wider spreads and larger swings.
- Managed or pegged
- Its exchange rate is steered or fixed by the authorities and does not float freely.
The rupee’s rate is set in the market, but the Reserve Bank steps in to limit sharp moves, an arrangement usually called a managed float.
These are descriptions people use, drawn from how the currency has commonly behaved. They are not promises about how it will behave.
What typically moves it
- The price of crude oil, most of which India imports
- Foreign investment flowing into and out of Indian shares and bonds
- Reserve Bank of India policy and its activity in the currency market
- The trade balance, including imports of gold
- The general direction of the US dollar
These are the things people who follow this currency usually watch. They explain how the market works; they do not say what the exchange rate will do next.
The scheduled releases to know
- Monetary Policy Committee decisionPublished by Reserve Bank of IndiaExplainer: Rates
- Consumer Price IndexPublished by National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme ImplementationExplainer: CPI
- Gross Domestic ProductPublished by National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme ImplementationExplainer: GDP
- Index of Industrial ProductionPublished by National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme ImplementationExplainer: Industrial production
- Merchandise tradePublished by Ministry of Commerce and IndustryExplainer: Trade balance
No dates or figures are shown here: each publisher’s own calendar is the authority. The explainers are in Economic Events; a release without a link has no explainer on this site yet.
Its main session
Asia (Mumbai hours). The onshore market keeps Mumbai hours. Offshore contracts on the rupee trade in Singapore, Dubai, London and New York outside them.
At GIO4X
A short history
The name comes from the rupiya, a silver coin issued by Sher Shah Suri in the sixteenth century. The Reserve Bank of India was established in 1935. The rupee was decimalised in 1957. After a balance-of-payments crisis in 1991 India opened its economy, and the exchange rate has been set in the market since 1993. The ₹ symbol was adopted in 2010, and an inflation target with a Monetary Policy Committee in 2016.
Words worth knowing
A reference page. Educational information, not investment advice or a recommendation to trade. It gives no exchange rate, no interest rate and no forecast.