The rupee has touched an all-time low of 68.75 against the dollar Wednesday on fears India’s cheap food plan would increase the budget deficit. Surging oil prices and tapering Fed stimulus could push the rupee and other emerging market currencies down.
"This is [rupee’s fall] unprecedented and we are in
unchartered territory for the rupee," BBC quotes Vishnu
Varathan, an economist with Mizuho, who added that he expects the
rupee to fall to the 70 mark against the US dollar.
The Indian currency is one of the world's worst-performing
currencies this year, as it has lost over 20 percent of its
value.
India’s rupee
nosedived, after the country’s lower house of Parliament okayed a
$20 billion plan to provide cheap grain to the poor. This raised
concern that India’s sky-high fiscal deficit will rise even
further.
On Wednesday BNP Paribas cut its growth forecast for India for
this fiscal year to 3.7 percent from 5.2 percent - the slowest
pace since 1992.
A jump in oil prices amid fears of military action against Syria
has also knocked Asian Markets. An 8.9 percent jump in Brent
crude in August is set to boost costs for India, which imports
almost 80 percent of its oil, Bloomberg reports. This may fuel
the country’s inflation and worsen India's deficit.
International investors have withdrawn nearly $12bn from India's
markets since the beginning of June, according to the BBC.
Investor confidence was mainly hurt by the expectation the Fed
will begin to cut its $85 billion a month bond purchase
stimulus. As developed economies are sending more signals
they are getting closer to a recovery track, emerging economies are starting to feel increasing pressure. In
the past three months emerging markets have seen an exodus
of cash, with their 20 most-traded currencies falling more than 5
percent.
Investors are now hastening to buy dollars before the US caps its
monetary stimulus, Natalya Orlova, Alfa Bank’s chief economist,
told Business RT. “They are buying up greenbacks now, giving
emerging economies their domestic currencies back,” she said.
“It’s all part of a general flight-to-safety trade --
investors are liquidating positions in riskier assets,”
Bloomberg quotes a currency strategist at Bank of
Tokyo-Mitsubishi Lee Hardman.
Barclays investment bank is bearish on Turkish Lira, Indonesian
Rupiah, South African Rand and the Indian Rupee.
The bank’s report notes that domestic inflation pressures have
driven some emerging market central banks, including Brazil's,
into action and more central bank measures could follow, but adds
that "India's decision to tinker with capital controls only
brought renewed funding pressures, setting an example for the
rest the EM space."
The Russian rouble has been weakening throughout the summer,
sharing the emerging market currencies trend. The Russian
currency lost 8% against the dollar over the last six months, but
Brazil’s currency fell by 21%, the Indian rupee by 19%, the South
African rand by 15%, Indonesian rupiah by 12%, and the Turkish
lira by 12%.
Russia has one of the lowest national debt-to-GDP ratios in the
G20, which helped keep the currency market fairly stable.
“The currencies of other emerging markets with imbalanced
government finances fell deeper than the Russian rouble”,
Voice of Russia radio quotes Senior Economist at Sberbank Anton
Stroutchenevski.