By Rakesh Sharma | Updated on Oct 12, 2026 at 10:14 AM
The Reserve Bank of India’s special window for state-run oil refiners will take almost $10 billion of monthly dollar demand off the spot market, easing pressure on the rupee, according to people familiar with the development.
Processors Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. will now tap the State Bank of India to meet their daily requirement of the US currency to purchase crude and petroleum products, said the people, asking not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Under the facility, the central bank will sell dollars to the state-run firms through designated lenders, the authority had said in a statement on Saturday.
Previously, the oil companies bid for dollars from multiple banks in the currency market, weighing down the rupee, the people said.
The three refiners can process more than 3 million barrels of crude a day, and also import other products, chiefly liquefied petroleum gas, to meet demand in the world’s third-largest oil-consuming nation.
The special window is among several steps the RBI has taken to support the rupee, which neared its record low of close to 97 a dollar last week. The central bank also introduced a tool, similar to the one used by its Chinese counterpart, requiring banks to park cash with the RBI for certain foreign exchange transactions.
The rupee gained as much as 1.2%, the most since early April, to 95.5938 per dollar on Monday.
The aggressive measures to shore up the currency come as the US-Iran war has driven up crude and freight costs, swelling India’s oil import bill and pressuring external finances. The cost of crude imports, which account for about 28% of the country’s inbound shipments, rose 22.4% from a year earlier to $96 billion in the April to August period, the commerce ministry data show.
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