The Pound Sterling to Indian Rupee (GBP/INR) exchange rate softened by around -0.31% on Friday afternoon.
After British data produced reasonably positive results on Friday, the Pound strengthened versus many of its peers. A recent spate of better-than-expected ecostats has prompted rate hawks to speculate that the Bank of England (BoE) will increase the benchmark interest rate before the end of 2015. Chris Williamson, chief economist at financial data company Markit, said: ‘Some policymakers will therefore be getting increasingly twitchy trigger fingers given the encouraging news on pay growth, and a chance of a rate hike this year has risen substantially. If the pace of economic growth revives, as widely expected, the recent upturn in pay takes away the main remaining argument to hold off with raising interest rates, and pressure to tighten policy looks set to build significantly as we move into the second half of the year.’
Friday’s government spending data produced positive results, which caused the Pound to climb. A Treasury spokesman said: ‘We have more than halved the deficit, but at just under 5% it is still one of the highest in the developed world. We’ve learnt that there is no shortcut to fixing the public finances. So that is why we will bring forward a strong new fiscal framework at the budget to entrench a permanent commitment to run a budget surplus in normal times, and the budget responsibility it represents,’ he said.
The Indian Rupee, meanwhile, strengthened in response to lower oil prices as the US Dollar gradually advances. ‘Over the next 14 days there is likely to be increasing risk tension regarding the Greek Eurozone membership which could help to drive risk aversion higher and potentially also the dollar stronger,’ said Bjarne Schieldrop, commodity analyst at SEB Markets. ‘This is likely to be bearish for Brent crude oil.’
The Rupee also gained thanks to June’s Foreign Reserves increasing from $352.71 billion to $354.29 billion. ‘The RBI bought dollars from open market when the rupee gained to the 62 levels and sold them when the rupee touched 64.50 levels,’ a forex dealer said requesting anonymity.
The Pound Sterling to Indian Rupee (GBP/INR) exchange rate was trending within the range of 100.6000 – 101.3100 during Friday’s Europen session.
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