Higher palm oil purchases by the world's biggest vegetable oil importer could support palm oil futures and help top producer Indonesia in bringing down ballooning inventories.

Speaking at the sidelines of the Mindmine Summit 2022 in the national capital, Nageswaran said, “I think it is because of market reading the sowing data, as something that is signalling a future shortage, which is probably misplaced. There is scope for the month-on-month spike to come down.” He was responding to questions from journalists on food inflation.

India does not need to defend the rupee because its economic fundamentals are such that the currency can take care of itself, the country's chief economic adviser, V. Anantha Nageswaran, said on Tuesday.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday sought to know from India Inc what is stopping them from getting into manufacturing when countries abroad are showing their belief in India. The NDA government will do everything industry invest in India and provide the schemes required, she said. Policies like ​​PLI, tax cuts have been provided to support the private industry in India.

"From a policy perspective, another month of above-target inflation clears the path for further monetary tightening at the next MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting on 30 September," said Rahul Bajoria, chief India economist at Barclays Bank. India's retail inflation rate rose to 7.0% in August from 6.71% in the previous month, data released on Monday showed. The August reading was a tad above the 6.9% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

Economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have already lowered the growth forecast for India to 7% from 7.2%, while Citigroup Inc. cut it more sharply to 6.7%. The country, which last year was the world’s fastest growing major economy, is poised to lose that spot to Saudi Arabia this year, according to International Monetary Fund projections in July.

A closely-watched measure of reserves cover -- the number of months of imports a country can finance with its foreign-exchange holdings -- has dropped to about seven for EM Asia ex-China, the lowest since the global financial crisis in 2008, according to Standard Chartered Plc. It was about 10 months at the beginning of the year and as high as 16 in August 2020, pointing to an erosion of developing nation firepower to defend currencies.

The meeting comes ahead of the government likely to announce the new Foreign Trade Policy later this month and the country’s merchandise exports shrinking 1.15% in August- the first drop since November 2020. The board includes participants from states, union territories, and senior officials from public and private sectors and provides a platform to discuss ways on boosting manufacturing and exports.

For 2022-23, an export target of USD 23.56 billion has been fixed for the agricultural and processed food products basket, the commerce ministry said in an official statement.