Dubai: India’s rupee was among the biggest movers on Friday, climbing against the dollar as authorities stepped up efforts to curb the currency’s losses.

The Reserve Bank of India said it planned to sell, on behalf of the finance ministry, Rs220 billion (Dh13 billion, $3.6 billion) in cash management bills every Monday, to try to limit supply of the currency.

This is in addition to the measures already announced last month, including weekly bond sales, restricting banks’ access to cash and curbs on currency derivatives trading.

Previous measures met with some brief success, but this week the rupee was again on the slide: the dollar hit a fresh record high of Rs61.87 on Tuesday, taking its drop since the beginning of May to 13 per cent.

The latest announcement drove the dollar back 0.7 per cent to Rs60.86, but analysts were sceptical about the measures having any lasting impact.

“Given the high current account deficit, all these measures can provide only temporary relief, which if not complemented by structural reforms to step up savings and investment, may pose significant risk to the balance of payments,” said Upasna Bhardwaj at ING.

Unemployment

Sterling has been on a roll since the Bank of England announced its forward guidance on Wednesday, making any move higher in interest rates contingent on the rate of unemployment falling to 7 per cent — or mid 2016 by the Bank’s current projections.

Currency traders were not convinced this point could be reached without inflation becoming too high and triggering the Bank’s so called “knock out” clause on price stability.

The pound edged 0.1 per cent higher to $1.5552 on Friday, but was up 1.7 per cent over the week.

Australia’s dollar had its best five-day advance since December 2011, the height of the commodity boom, after Chinese trade data revealed a surge in imports, driven by shipments of commodities.

The Aussie climbed 2.7 per cent to $0.9142 versus the US dollar.

Better than expected purchasing manager surveys on the services sectors helped both the euro and sterling this week. The euro gained 0.7 per cent over the week to $1.3370 against the dollar, but was down 0.8 per cent to £0.8605 versus the pound.

- Financial Times