Yesterday, several media houses published fake news claiming that Indian Rupee has ended the year as the worst-performing Asian currency. Despite the fact that a simple online search shows that value of several other Asian currencies fell much more than the fall of INR, leading media houses, including pink papers like Economic Times claimed that ‘the Indian rupee ended 2022 as the worst-performing Asian currency with a fall of 11.3%’.
Quoting or directly publishing a report by Reuters, several other newspapers and news channels like Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Times Now, Money Control and many others made the same claim in their headlines, that India Rupee was the worst-performing Asian currency in the year 2022. The reports stated that Indian Rupee against US Dollar fell 11.3% in the year, from ₹74.33 at the start of the year to ₹82.72 at the end of the year, and this is the worst performance by an Asian currency.
However, this is absolutely wrong claim. While it is correct that Indian Rupee fell 11.3% versus US Dollar during the year and it is a bad year for the Indian Currency, it was not the worst-performing Asian currency in the year. There are several other Asian currencies which fell much more than INR during the year.
As can be seen in the table below, the currencies of several Asian nations fell much more than Indian Rupee. Actually, Sri Lankan Rupee was the worst-performing Asian currency, which fell over 80% in the year, given the political turmoil the country faced after the country went bankrupt. The Turkish Lira was the second worst performer with a fall of over 40%.
In fact, the currencies of most neighbours of India fell at a much higher rate, with the Pakistani Rupee falling by 27.10%, and Bangladeshi Taka by 20.32%.
| Currency | Opening Value | Closing Value | Difference | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sri Lankan Rupee | 202.92 | 367.53 | 164.61 | 81.12% |
| Turkish lira | 13.32 | 18.69 | 5.37 | 40.32% |
| Pakistani Rupee | 178.25 | 226.55 | 48.30 | 27.10% |
| Bangladeshi Taka | 85.74 | 103.16 | 17.42 | 20.32% |
| Myanmar Kyat | 1778.41 | 2100.17 | 321.76 | 18.09% |
| Japanese Yen | 115.11 | 131.12 | 16.01 | 13.91% |
| Israeli Shekel | 3.11 | 3.53 | 0.42 | 13.50% |
| Indian Rupee | 74.51 | 82.75 | 8.24 | 11.06% |
| Nepalese Rupee | 118.99 | 132.13 | 13.14 | 11.04% |
| Taiwan dollar | 27.72 | 30.66 | 2.94 | 10.61% |
| Indonesian Rupiah | 14242 | 15538.5 | 1296.50 | 9.10% |
| Chinese Yuan | 6.36 | 6.90 | 0.54 | 8.53% |
Even better economies like Israel and Japan saw their currencies fall at a higher rate than the fall of INR. Others like Taiwan and Indonesia saw their currencies fall at similar levels as the INR. Chinese Yuan fell by 8.53% in the year.
Moreover, outside Asia too, there are several major currencies that saw similar or more falls in the year. The British Pound fell by 11.75% against US Dollar. Worldwide, the worst-performing currency was Venezuelan Bolivar, which fell by a whopping 272.95% vs USD in the year. Ghanaian Cedi was another bad performer with a 65% fall.
Therefore, it is completely false that Indian Rupee was the worst-performing currency in the year 2022, there are several Asian currencies that performed much worse.
Source of the fake news
Most of the media reports carrying the fake news quoted Reuters, but actually, Reuters didn’t make this false claim. The headline in the Reuters report is ‘Indian rupee ends down more than 10% in 2022, worst since 2013,’ which is factually correct. In the body of the report, it said that ‘the Indian rupee ended 2022 as one of the worst-performing Asian currencies’.
Reuters actually didn’t say that the Indian currency was the worst-performing Asian currency, it said that India Rupee was one of the worst-performing Asian currencies. But in an effort to show that Indian economy has suffered under the Modi government at the centre, the media houses distorted that sentence to claim that Indian Rupee was the worst-performing Asian currency in 2022. As we have seen above, there are several major Asian currencies that performed worse than INR.
