A good time to buy some rupees for the coming season ,at present it is around the 84 to the £ mark.

Live rates at 2008.09.23 03:54:17 UTC

1.00 GBP = 84.6069 INR

United Kingdom Pounds India Rupees

1 GBP = 84.6069 INR 1 INR = 0.0118194 GBP

Enfield, When you say 'buy' - do you mean send some 'sterling' from the UK (or where ever) to your Indian bank account? I thought that was the way to do it or am I missing a trick?

Hemingway.

Depends where you are in the World,I suppose.
Sending sterling to your Indian bank account from the UK has the same effect.
Just making the point it's high at the moment.
Can't really see you missing a trick old son, far too wiley, and a Yorkie as well !

bABU will put you right - it costs at least £25 to send it from here. Anyway, we are not supposed to have bank accounts out there

Why shouldn't we have a bank account,I have two, one since 1995 ?
I regularly transfer money from the UK with no problems ,and also invest a few lakhs at 10% for up to 12 months at a time.

Yes we have two as well, but I think if you read back to one of Douglas's threads, we are not supposed to have our individual accounts. Even more so now we have not got our 5 year x. We transfer money no problem BUT I am sure I too have read it that like owning our own property we should not have bank accounts Oh well! here we go again.

Hi Morse,

We use money2india online transfer to ICICI India without transfer charge, and you get the daily interbank forex rate. Also, the transfer is trackable online. You can transfer to other banks in India using ICICI's facility, but think there may be a charge.

Agree with enfield, exchange rate picking up nicely, more rupees to the pound up in line with dollar weakening. Quoting £1 = 85.1465 as I type. Was as low as 77 R/-at one point last season, and briefly touched an 88 R/- high some months before that.

Likewise, have 2 bank accounts there without problem, but don't think it's really worth it on the 12% interest when declared inflation in India is running at 13% (and more in Goa), unless you take advantage of currency fluctuations, and that would involve the hassles of repatriation of funds.

The 20% costs (£25 you cited) I think you're referring to are when you make a cash withdrawl from a UK ATM using an Indian card. You lose about 20% on the transaction, most of which is tax, the rest on the poor rate of conversion.

Am sitting on the sidelines to transfer to India, but have a feeling the exchange rate might nudge up a little more, even better if you are sending Foreign Exchange to India (i.e selling pounds; buying rupees).

ICICI UK have a nice 7.2% Hi Save 12 month lock in at the moment if you're looking for a safe haven for cash in the UK, and RBS have a 7.25% 12 month Cash mini Isa (variable with B of E base rates); £3.600 allowance. Otherwise, there's money to be made in these turbulent markets.

IMHO, it's a disgrace that they banned "short selling"on financials; the only way to hedge your lossses if you're actually holding stock, depreciating in value.

Seems like incompetent risk takers in the UK and US are getting big rewards for their failure, while the ordinary tax payer, small invester, home owner, suffers and foots the bill.

We are lucky in as much as we still have 2 years and 3 months left on our 5 year X's,plus our little pink residents book.
Not sure if we'd be contravening banking regs. without them ?
Fiscally Yours

We opened a personal account in 2007 at Centurion Bank of Punjab while on a tourist visa as did several of our friends at the same time. None of us were ever told that it was illegal . We were told we could not open a business account on a tourist visa but not a personal one. Have we broken yet another law without knowing it????:curse:

Have you noticed that the Centurion Bank was taken over by HDFC in May ?
Continuing as seperate entities for the time being.

No Enfield we hadn't but that probably explains why we had an urgent demand from the bank for a copy of our current visas as the ones we used to open the account had run out and they were needed for audit purposes When we pointed out that they were only valid for 6 months all went silent.
Thanks for the info.

Not good for me, who is hoping to send his rupees back home

Sorry Andy, but you can please some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all of the time.

Could you not find a friend and change some rupees for £1. down the shack!

oops! naughty.

Me thinks I am cursed with the bad rate virus Everytime I have sent monies over to Goa the rate has been abysmal. I lost a packet on the largest chunk of the monies when we 'bought'. Now it looks like the same will happen again on its way back.