The Indian rupee witnessed its biggest downfall since the start of calendar year 2011. The partially convertible rupee was at 46.18/19 to a dollar. Instability of country’s Sensex added to the problem of rupee and made it weaker.

On the other hand, dollar has gained momentum and due to this the local shares has also plunged in to the negative. The regain of dollar has helped it to be stronger than Yen and Franc.

The dollar gain has led to increase its demand from local oil companies as they want to make month-end import payments and also for clearing outstanding dues to Iran. India is estimated to owe around $5 billion to Iran for its oil imports and state-run banks have been buying dollars assertively for the past few weeks to repay the dues.

Sharing his views on the dollar gain, senior forex dealer with a foreign bank said, "There is a lot of dollar buying related to oil, but there is strong support for the rupee around 46.20-46.25 level and if the support fails rupee could weaken to 45.40”.

As earlier said, dollar maintained its dominance over other major currencies, and was up by 0.06% at 74.059 points which is increased amount from last week’s trade amount of 73.734 points.