India’s Eco. Adviser: Ready to take steps to calm markets over coronavirus, USD/INR falls back below 74.00

On Thursday, India’s Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subramanian said that the government and the financial authorities are all prepped up to take necessary steps to calm markets rattled by the growing fears over the coronavirus outbreak.

“Government and regulator will be responding when it will be necessary,” Subramanian responded when asked whether the government will roll out some relief measures.

This comes after the domestic stock exchanges collapsed at the open and hit the circuit breaker, following which the trading was halted for 45 minutes. The benchmark Nifty 50 index crashed to the lowest since Feb 2017 at 8,555.15 before recovering sharply to 10k mark, in tandem with the improvement in the broader market sentiment.

USD/INR corrected from a record high of 74.578 to now trade at 73.96, down 0.80% on the day. The rupee strengthened on the back of the solid comeback seen in the Indian equities that offered some respite to the investors.