Mumbai: The Indian rupee retreated from the day’s highs on Wednesday afternoon tracking a choppy domestic sharemarket but higher regional peers continued to underpin sentiment.

At 2:15pm, the partially convertible rupee was at Rs45.445/455 per dollar, off a high of Rs45.3975 but still stronger than 45.6250/6350 at close on Tuesday. On Monday the rupee hit 45.38, its strongest since 12 January.

Dealers said the market was expecting good foreign institutional buying at the NMDC follow-on share sale that opens on Tuesday. This is expected to attract dollar inflows and help the rupee.

The government begins selling shares in state-run miner NMDC <NMDC.BO>, the country’s largest iron ore producer, to raise about $3 billion in an offer from 10-12 March. The Malaysian ringgit hit a 19-month high against the dollar on Wednesday amid expectations of further policy tightening, while gains in the South Korean won and Philippine peso prompted central banks there to intervene.

Indian shares trimmed gains and were trading just marginally higher.

In the currency futures market, the most traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange and MCX-SX were both quoting at Rs45.5225, with the total traded volume on the two exchanges at about $3.9 billion.