With Rupee on sticky wicket, PM Modi to hold crucial meeting with officials

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a meeting with finance ministry officials on Friday to discuss the fall in the rupee and other economic issues, a government source told news agency Reuters.

The meeting comes in the backdrop of the Indian currency touching its lifetime low of 72.91 to a dollar, depreciating 12.3 percent since the beginning of 2018. Intra day, the Indian currency today erased all gains against the dollar and weakened sharply to 71.99.

The rupee Wednesday rebounded from its historic low of 72.91 to end higher by 51 paise at 72.18 after the Finance Ministry assured of steps to avert its fall to "unreasonable levels".

Besides having an impact on current account deficit, the nosediving rupee has made imports costlier and led to petrol and diesel prices skyrocketing to record highs.

The Finance Ministry has ruled out any cut in taxes to ease the burden on consumers, saying it does not have the bandwidth to lose any revenue without developmental spending being cut. The government can ill-afford this in an election year.

The government has so far maintained that it would not take any knee-jerk action as a response to the fall in rupee or spike in fuel prices.

Earlier news agency PTI said that Modi is likely to hold a review meet this weekend to analyse the health of the economy on Saturday and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar, PMEAC Chairman Bibek Debroy and Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia are among the officials who are likely to attend the meeting.

Forex traders will also closely watch an economic review meeting by Prime Minister Narendra Modi scheduled on Saturday for any steps that could prop up the rupee, which has been the worst performer in Asia so far in 2018, Reuters wrote.

With Agency Inputs