Kartik Goyal And Subhadip Sircar Bloomberg

The first signs that Indias Rs 59,25,000 crore sovereign bond market is cracking under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic showed up on Tuesday. For half an hour after trading started, nobody bought or sold a bond on the Reserve Bank of Indias platform. Volumes at the mid-day was just Rs 655 crore, compared with the years daily average of Rs 45,...

Weak fundamentals aside, the currency is also in a seasonally weak month. The rupee has slid an average 2.3 per cent in August over the past nine years, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Yet this time, the losses are much larger than usual and have erased gains accumulated in June and July.

Investors have turned skittish about the health of India's finances amid signs that the government is ready to sacrifice fiscal discipline as it weighs an aid package to appease farmers, a key voting block.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel's comments Friday that the rupee's drop is moderate in comparison to emerging market peers and that the central bank doesn't have any target in mind unnerved investors who were expecting the authority to boost its defense of Asia's worst-performing major currency.

The rupee climbed 0.2 percent to 64.8175 per dollar in Mumbai Friday, taking its gain this month to 2.9 percent. The three-month advance is the biggest for any quarter since the period ended September 2012.

The first signs that Indias Rs 59,25,000 crore sovereign bond market is cracking under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic showed up on Tuesday. For half an hour after trading started, nobody bought or sold a bond on the Reserve Bank of Indias platform. Volumes at the mid-day was just Rs 655 crore, compared with the years daily average of Rs 45,...

Weak fundamentals aside, the currency is also in a seasonally weak month. The rupee has slid an average 2.3 per cent in August over the past nine years, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Yet this time, the losses are much larger than usual and have erased gains accumulated in June and July.

Investors have turned skittish about the health of India's finances amid signs that the government is ready to sacrifice fiscal discipline as it weighs an aid package to appease farmers, a key voting block.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel's comments Friday that the rupee's drop is moderate in comparison to emerging market peers and that the central bank doesn't have any target in mind unnerved investors who were expecting the authority to boost its defense of Asia's worst-performing major currency.

The rupee climbed 0.2 percent to 64.8175 per dollar in Mumbai Friday, taking its gain this month to 2.9 percent. The three-month advance is the biggest for any quarter since the period ended September 2012.