Rupee tumbles by 69 paise over the week

Mumbai, Aug 18: The Mayhem in benchmark indices played havoc on a fragile Rupee, extending a massive loss of 69 paise over the past week.

Sensex had tumbled by nearly 726.73 points last week to end at 14,141.52 points on Friday, reflecting the so-called US sub prime mortgage crisis and owing to a resultant slow down in major global markets.

''Rupee will move in proportion to the Sensex margins and may even plunge further to 40.75-80 levels if the stocks remains in red next week'', said Naveen Raghuvanshi, senior forex dealer from Development Credit Bank(DCB) to the sources.

Rupee, which kicked off the week at 40.62/64 per dollar, touched a low of 41.71 per dollar on Friday, however, recovered marginally drawing support on extensively strong inflows from foreign institutional investors.

After inching up to a high of 41.21 per dollar, Rupee settled at 41.31/32 on Friday, up by almost 5 paise from its previous close of 41.36/37 per dollar.

Call rates, which were range bound at 6.00-6.25 percent levels after the recent hike in Cash Reserve Ratios(CRR), shot up to 55 percent on Friday and closed at a comfortable 10-15 percent.

UNI