Latest (Friday, October 9, late afternoon): The Reserve Bank of India announced a special window to meet the entire daily dollar requirements of the three public-sector oil marketing companies, Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, selling dollars to them directly through designated banks starting Monday, October 12, until further notice. The facility takes the oil companies’ sizable crude-import dollar demand off the open market, the classic mechanism India has used in past rupee-defense episodes. It landed hours after the central bank imposed the day’s earlier set of FX-market rules.
Latest (Friday, October 9): The Reserve Bank of India barred rebooking of cancelled INR foreign-exchange derivative contracts and cut the no-exposure hedging threshold from $100 million to $5 million, a sharp tightening of rupee-market rules.
The Reserve Bank of India announced four regulatory measures for the foreign-exchange market, citing evolving conditions and the need for orderly market functioning. Authorized dealers may no longer let users rebook cancelled INR foreign-exchange derivative contracts, though rollovers at maturity remain permitted. The threshold for taking FX derivative positions without establishing underlying exposure was cut from $100 million to $5 million equivalent, and dealers must obtain undertakings that the same exposure is not hedged elsewhere.