With the rupee continuing to depreciate, importers are feeling the pinch and have started delaying payments. While bigger companies said they were still protected, smaller players said they are under severe pressure.
At 48-levels (to the dollar), importers are facing pressure for making payments for goods imported at 44. Most of them are delaying paym.ents by six months, availing buyers’ credit on the expectation that the rupee will be stronger next year.
It closed at 48.33, a 23-month low, after touching 48.35 during intra-day trade today.
The rupee has lost 8.9 per cent against the USDDollar since August on the back of global risk aversion. Following Italy’s downgrade by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, the euro fell to a 10-year low against the yen on Tuesday. Italy has Europe’s second-largest debt burden.
The markets are now eagerly awaiting announcements from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting (of the US Federal Reserve), scheduled the coming Wednesday.
“With the weakening of the rupee, all importers will get hit. For oil marketing companies, the under-recovery in the (price) controlled products like diesel, PDS kerosene and domestic LPG will go up further. With every rupee depreciation, for BPCL alone, the under-recovery on these three products will be an additional Rs 2,000 crore per annum. For the entire industry, the under-recovery go up by Rs 9,500 crore per annum,” said a senior official from Bharat Petroleum Corporation.
No comments:
Post a Comment