MUMBAI: The Indian rupee stayed firmed in afternoon trade on Tuesday but was slightly away from the 19-month high touched in early deals.
Robust capital inflows, strong Asian peers and a positive domestic share market aided the rupee's gain, dealers said. At 12:33 p.m., the partially convertible rupee was at 44.38/39 per dollar, after opening at 44.35, a level last seen on Sept 8, 2008. It had closed at 44.44/45 on Monday.
The rupee is expected to move in 44.3500/44.5000 band during the rest of the day. Since there were some holidays last week, lot of inflows were pending, which are coming in now, leading to the rupee's rise, dealers said.
The rupee had risen 2.7 percent in March, its biggest monthly gain since May last year, on the back of foreign portfolio inflows of about $4.4 billion.
Asian currencies were stronger against the dollar. Indian shares flip-flopped after testing fresh 25-month highs and the 30-share BSE index was trading up 0.2 percent.
The index of the dollar against six major currencies was up 0.19 percent. One-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were at 44.40/50, near the onshore spot rate.
In the currency futures market, the most traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange and MCX-SX were both at 44.48.
