The domestic currency in today's session opened higher by 19 paise at 73.87 against the US dollar in comparison to Monday's record-low close of 74.06. On Friday, the rupee closed at 73.77.

On Friday, rupee weakened past 74 mark to a record-low of 74.22 per dollar after the RBI in its fourth bi-monthly monetary policy review meet maintained status quo by keeping repo rate unchanged at 6.5% while at the same time changing the monetary policy stance to calibrated tightening from neutral.

As per the brokerage firm Motilal Oswal, dollar also lost ground against the yen due to rising US bond yield, political tensions in Europe and the US-China trade war situation. The 10-year US bond yield was last trading at 3.2404%, close to a seven-year high.

At the same time, IMF reduced its global growth forecast for both 2018 and 2019 to 3.7% on account of trade worries between the US and China. The IMF also highlighted the growth trend in Turkey which will deteriorate drastically from 3.5% in 2017 to merely 0.4% in the current year due to volatile Turkish lira. In respect of India, IMF estimates GDP growth at 7.3% for FY 2018-19 but lowers forecast for FY20 to 7.4% against the previous estimate of 7.5%.

Meanwhile, equity benchmark indices opened higher, S&P BSE Sensex gained 0.5 percent or 170 points to 34,640 and the NSE Nifty 50 Index rose 0.35 percent or 36 points to 10,385.

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