IOC leads OMC gainers

Oil Marketing Company (OMC) stocks like HPCL, BPCL and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) are all in the green at the moment. IOC is up over 1% at Rs.208.85, its current intra day low though intra day high was robust at Rs.214. Volumes remain muted.

These OMC stocks are in the green after the RBI yesterday opened a special window to meet the entire daily dollar requirements of these OMC companies. Aimed at bringing down the volatility, Reserve Bank will undertake sell/buy USD-INR forex swaps for a fixed tenor with the OMCs through a designated bank. The swap facility gets operationalised with immediate effect and will remain in place until further notice. OMCs are the biggest buyers of dollar, to the tune of $400-500 million on a daily basis or around $8-8.5 billion/per month to import around 7.5 million tones of crude oil.. Thus by directing this huge buying to a special window, RBI is hoping that the pressure on the rupee will get mitigated to some extent.