The dollar got a brief moment of respite when monetary policy minutes actually showed that policy members spotted the dangers of inflation and advocated increasing interest rates at the expense of growth.

However, the dollar downtrend continued when expectations were rising that interest rates in the euro zone would keep going up.

The dollar decline precipitated when the market interpreted comments from Jean Claude Trichet as meaning that the European Central Bank was likely to hike its benchmark interest rate in June.

Meanwhile, focus had changed as the Group of Seven Finance ministers were meeting with the IMF and the World Bank, fuelling expectations among currency traders that the group would endorse further dollar weakness to tackle wide trade imbalances between countries.

With a lot of speculation going on, currency trading recorded some wild volatility. The euro gained when ECB official, Yves Mersch, stated that the euro zone would be able to sustain a hard landing in the US economy. Toward the end of the week, a batch of weak data refueled concerns about the health of the US economy and pushed the dollar lower.

Against the Mauritian rupee, the dollar was trading at MUR 32.569 yesterday compared to MUR 32.751 a week earlier.

The yen was downtrodden throughout most of last week as investors resumed selling yen to invest in higher-yielding assets. Against all expectations, the G7 did not single out the Japanese currency’s weakness and in a way gave the green lights for carry trades.

According to analysts, yen selling would persists until market players came to the realization that the Japanese economy was getting stronger relative to the uncertain US economy.

Against the Mauritian rupee, the yen was trading at MUR 27.23 as compared to 27.52 same as a week earlier.

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