MUMBAI, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The Indian rupee ended little changed on Thursday after the Reserve Bank of India kept its benchmark policy rates unchanged, with the focus now on U.S. economic data and remarks from a Federal Reserve official due later in the day.
The rupee ended at 82.9550 against the U.S. dollar, barely changed from its close at 82.9675 in the previous session.
The dollar index hovered near the 104 handle, while Asian currencies were mostly rangebound.
The RBI kept policy rates unchanged on Thursday while signalling rate cuts may be some time away as it focuses on getting inflation to its 4% medium-term target.
"The last mile of disinflation is always the most challenging and that has to be kept in mind," RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in his statement.
The rupee had risen to an intraday high of 82.8975 aided by dollar sales from local private banks early in the session but it pared gains after "typical dip buying demand (on the dollar-rupee pair)," surfaced, a foreign exchange trader at a state-run bank said.
While short bets on the Chinese yuan have risen to their highest since mid-November last year, the rupee was the outlier among major Asian currencies, with investors maintaining their bullish view on the local currency, according to a Reuters poll.
While the rupee currently appears to be "a little on the stuck side," technical factors indicate that the bias tilts slightly positive for the local currency, Dilip Parmar, a foreign exchange research analyst at HDFC Securities said.
Investors now await U.S. initial jobless claims data and remarks from Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin for cues on when the central bank might begin easing policy rates.
Investors are currently pricing in a 32% chance of the Fed keeping rates unchanged in May, up from 6% last week, according to CME's FedWatch tool.
Reporting by Jaspreet Kalra; Editing by Eileen Soreng
