Dharamraj Dhutia

Indian IT firm Persistent Systems is set to raise up to 80 billion rupees ($842 ​million) through the sale of rupee-denominated bonds with multiple shorter-duration ‌papers of up to five-year maturity, two merchant bankers said on Friday.

India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries is planning to raise around 100 billion rupees ($1.04 billion) ​via a rupee-denominated debt sale to partly fund a ‌bridge loan it took to acquire US healthcare firm Organon & Co., three sources said on Tuesday.

India's central bank has net sold bonds worth 1 trillion rupees this financial year, its biggest annual net bond sale in more than a decade, treasury officials said, with market ​participants expecting the total to double by December.

Sustained Reserve Bank of India action through bond sales, foreign exchange swaps, and rupee defence has helped more than halve the banking system's liquidity surplus, bankers said.

The Indian central bank absorbed more than 6 trillion rupees ($63.53 billion) through cash withdrawal operations on Monday, a day after ​banking liquidity surged to a record high.

Indian bond traders expect the central bank to step up bond sales for liquidity absorption, as policymakers likely seek to ​strengthen transmission of expected rate hikes, after the first such auction in ‌nine years recorded strong interest.

Pressure on the rupee is likely to persist this week as oil prices stay above $100 a barrel and expectations of a U.S. Federal Reserve rate hike grow, also weighing on government bonds.

India's central bank on Friday announced an open market sale of bonds, one of the most potent liquidity-draining tools, hours after its chief said in a media interview that all options ​remained on the table.

India's foreign exchange reserves climbed to another record high of $740.80 billion ​in the week to August 28, central bank ‌data showed on Friday, boosted by heavy inflows from special schemes to attract dollar inflows into the country.

The Reserve Bank of India's special dollar deposit scheme drew a larger-than-expected $127.23 billion, leaving the central bank having to deal with a problem of plenty.