- Pound (GBP) supported by BoE, data & vaccine rollout
- No high impacting data today, but a busy week for releases
- Indian Rupee (INR) rises despite surging covid cases
- RBI foreign exchange reserves grow & surpass Russia’s as world’s fourth largest
The Pound Indian Rupee (GBP/INR) exchange rate is edging mildly lower, building on losses from the previous week. The pair shed -0.76% last week settling on Friday at 101.42, towards the low of the week. At 08:45 UTC, GBP/INR trades -0.05% at 101.31.
The Pound traded broadly higher versus its peers across the previous week after the Bank of England adopted a cautiously optimistic stance in its March policy decisions and UK public sector net borrowing was also below expectations.
The Pound continued be supported by optimistic vaccine news after 874,000 doses, a new record, were administered on Sunday. In total, so far, 27.6 million adults in the UK which is over half of the adult population have had at least one dose of a covid vaccine.
Whilst the UK economic calendar is quiet today, there are plenty of high impacting release due across the coming week including UK employment data tomorrow, inflation figures and manufacturing and service sector PMIs on Wednesday and retail sales on Friday.
The Indian Rupee held up well across the previous week and as the new week begins despite surging covid cases and some lockdown returning. India reported 40, 953 new daily infections on Saturday, its highest level in almost four months.
The state of Maharashtra, which is the richest state and also considered the economic backbone to the country has seen more than half on those new cases. A growing number of regions are implementing containment measures such as closing restaurants and even lockdowns, which could impact India’s economic recovery.
There is little in the way of economic data due from India this week. On Friday, the Reserve Bank of India revealed that India’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $1.739 billion to $582,037 billion in the week ending 12th March. India’s reserves had surpassed Russia’s to become the world’s fourth largest.
