Rupee slumps to over 1-mnth low at 54.80; down 55 paise Vs USD

The rupee on Friday tanked by a massive 55 paise to close at over one-month low of 54.80 on dollar strengthening in global markets tracking favourable US job data and oil-related forex payments by Indian refiners.

"The factors that hit rupee today are mainly external. Favorable US job data pushed up the dollar.

Additionally, the "Greenback strengthened against yen. On the domestic front, heavy dollar demand from oil importers kept the local currency weak," said N S Venkatesh, Head (Treasury) at IDBI Bank.

The rupee commenced the day sharply lower at 54.57 against previous close of 54.25 at the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market.

As the day progressed, it recovered some ground and rose to 54.44 but again plunged later to 54.81, before settling down at 54.80, a fall of 55 paise, or 1.01 per cent, against the

dollar from its previous close.

This is rupee's lowest level since April 5 this year, when it had hit a low of 54.81.

Foreign institutional investors put Rs 544.11 crore (Rs 5.44 billion) into local equities on Friday, according to BSE provisional data.

Also, country's factory output measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production, which was released earlier in the day, rose to 2.5 per cent raising hopes that economic growth might cross 6 per cent mark during the current fiscal.

For the fiscal 2012-13 as a whole, the IIP slipped to one per cent, the lowest since 1991-92 when the factory output grew by a meagre 0.6 per cent.

It was 2.9 per cent in the previous fiscal.

The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies traded positively after US new claims for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level in more than five years.