Mumbai: Hawkish signals from the minutes of the latest monetary policy committee (MPC) review, escalation of the conflict in West Asia and the possibility of higher sugar imports are among the factors keeping the outlook for the rupee and bond yields clouded.

What could be a mitigating factor, however, is the record haul from forex-inflow programs. India has so far received $72.8 billion in dollar inflows through the special swap facility, giving the central bank an additional buffer to manage pressure on the currency.

The rupee, aided by central bank interventions, is expected to trade between 95.50 and 96.00 levels, while the 10-year bond yield is expected to trade with a negative bias, around 6.85% levels.

“The minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee were more hawkish compared to the statements, so the market will take some time to adjust. The floor is 6.87% to 6.88% for the 10-year yield, and it will move upwards if there are more crude shocks. Additionally, global bonds, especially US rates, are also trading with a negative bias whose impact is felt domestically,” said Gopal Tripathi, head of treasury, Jana Small Finance Bank.

The August MPC minutes struck a more hawkish tone, with members flagging that a broadening of inflation pressures could warrant a rate hike or policy recalibration.

Read more: FPIs invest Rs 23,544 crore in Indian equities in Aug on earnings revival, rupee stability
Separately, US Treasury yields initially fell sharply after the Treasury announced it would double its buybacks of longer-dated debt. After the buyback announcement on Thursday, the 10-year yield fell about 6 bps to 4.66%, while the 30-year dropped nearly 10 bps to 5.18%. But the rally quickly faded, by Friday, the US 10-year was back near 4.70% and the 30-year near 5.24%The 10 year India yield has decreased 28 bps to 6.85% this fiscal year.

Oil Pressure

For the rupee, oil prices remain a key pressure point even as the RBI continues to intervene. The intervention is expected to persist given the sizable inflows of $72.85 billion generated through the special swap facility, with $717 billion in foreign exchange reserves, traders said.

“Domestic markets’ price action is likely to be more influenced by energy prices and US rate movements, with USDINR’s attempts to break above 96.0 attracting strong counter presence of the RBI,” said Radhika Rao, senior economist, DBS Bank.

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Mumbai: The primary market is set for another busy week, with six mainboard and four SME initial public offerings (IPOs) scheduled to open for subscription, collectively seeking to raise more than ₹3,533 crore. This compares with ₹7,100 crore raised through seven mainboard and two SME IPOs last week.

Among the mainboard offerings, Symbiotec Pharmalab will be the largest, looking to raise around ₹1,757 crore. Lumino Industries and Skyways Air Services will follow, seeking to raise around ₹700 crore and ₹583 crore, respectively. Annu Projects and Hy-Tech Engineers will raise around ₹175 crore and ₹136 crore, respectively. Priority Jewels’ IPO will open on August 28 and close on September 1. Details of the issue have yet to be announced.

Two mainboard IPOs that opened for subscription last week – Augmont Enterprises and Tempsens Instruments India – will close this week. Five companies will also make their stock-market debuts, including Lalithaa Jewellery Mart, Horizon Industrial Parks, Sunshine Pictures, Shankesh Jewellers and Gaja Alternative Asset Management.

The SME segment will see four IPOs open for subscription this week. Kwick Forensic Solutions, Sumax Engineering, ABH Healthcare and Madhur Knit Crafts will collectively raise around ₹183 crore. Two SME companies, Dhanwel Hybrid Seeds and Mopshop Distribution, are also scheduled to list on the exchanges this week.

Read more: Sebi turns down Adani-linked FPIs’ settlement applications

The IPO pipeline has remained strong through August. So far this month, 20 mainboard IPOs have hit the market, raising around ₹20,850 crore, while 18 SME IPOs have collectively raised more than ₹941 crore. So far in 2026, 59 companies have raised around ₹72,000 crore through IPOs, underscoring the continued strength of primary-market activity.

At first glance, the headline number out of Southeast Asia’s aviation market this August looks reassuring. 

Total scheduled seat capacity edged up to 51 million, a modest 0.8% gain over the same month last year. In an industry still shadowed by fuel volatility and geopolitical friction, “growth” of any size tends to be read as good news. 

But sit with the underlying figures for more than a moment, and a more interesting, and less comfortable, picture emerges. 

This is not a region firing on all cylinders. It is a region bifurcating, with a handful of national carriers and a couple of standout markets doing the heavy lifting while much of the rest tread water or slide backward.

A market of winners and laggards, not a rising tide

Break the 0.8% headline figure down by country, and the “growth” story becomes a story about two economies: Indonesia and Vietnam. Indonesia holds its position as the region’s largest market, with capacity climbing past 11 million seats. 

Vietnam is the standout performer, its seat count rising by roughly 10% year on year, the fastest expansion among the top five markets, driven in large part by Vietnam Airlines, which posted an 8.2% increase and comfortably retained its title as the region’s busiest carrier.

Contrast that with Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, all three of which lost seats compared with last August. It is tempting to write this off as noise. Airline capacity fluctuates seasonally, and route-by-route decisions rarely tell a coherent macro story on their own. 

But three of the region’s five largest economies contracting in the same month that two others expand sharply suggests something structural rather than incidental: diverging cost bases, diverging currency pressure, and diverging exposure to the knock on effects of turmoil further afield, notably the Middle East, where regional jet fuel costs and the broader cost of living appear to be denting appetite for travel and route economics alike.

The budget airline retreat deserves more attention than it’s getting

Perhaps the most consequential trend buried in this month’s numbers is the quiet retrenchment of the region’s low-cost carriers. Mainline airlines now control 56% of Southeast Asian capacity, having grown nearly 6% year on year, while low-cost carriers contracted by almost 5%, ceding market share that had taken the better part of two decades to build. AirAsia, long the poster child of Southeast Asian budget aviation, cut capacity by 17%. Thai AirAsia cut deeper still, down 23%. Between the two, well over 900,000 seats simply vanished from the schedule compared with a year ago.

This matters beyond the balance sheets of two airlines. Southeast Asia’s aviation boom of the past fifteen years was substantially a budget carrier story: cheap, high-frequency point-to-point flying that stitched together an archipelago of emerging middle-class economies and made intra-regional travel a routine affair rather than a luxury. 

A meaningful and sustained retreat by the LCC sector, even as one bright exception, Indonesia’s Citilink, up a startling 73%, proves the model can still work under the right ownership and cost structure, raises a genuine question about affordability. 

If budget capacity keeps shrinking while mainline carriers pick up the slack, average fares in the region are likely to drift upward, with consequences for tourism-dependent economies from the Mekong Delta to the Philippine archipelago that have built growth strategies around low-cost connectivity.

Airports are not immune to the split, either

The airport data tells a parallel story of unevenness. Singapore Changi remains comfortably the region’s busiest hub, growing a healthy 3.5%, and Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City are close behind with solid gains. 

Hanoi is the standout, up over 12%, further evidence that Vietnam’s aviation sector is currently the region’s clearest growth engine. But Bangkok Don Mueang, Manila and Kuala Lumpur all shrank, echoing the national level contractions in Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Airport capacity, in other words, is simply following the money, and right now the money is concentrating in Jakarta, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore rather than spreading evenly across the region’s traditional hub cities.

What this means going forward

None of this amounts to a crisis. A 0.8% expansion, however uneven its distribution, is still expansion, and international long-haul demand to Europe and North America, up 10.8% and 9% respectively, suggests confidence in Southeast Asia as an origin and destination market remains intact where it counts most for revenue. 

But the aggregate numbers are masking a market that is quietly reorganizing itself: budget carriers ceding ground to full-service airlines, growth concentrating in Vietnam and Indonesia while Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines stall, and cost pressure from outside the region, particularly the Middle East, beginning to show up in route-level decisions. 

Anyone reading only the top-line seat count this month is reading half the story. The more consequential shifts are happening beneath it.

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