1st LD Writethru: U.S. dollar falls despite strong economic data

The U.S. dollar declined against most major currencies on Friday despite the solid economic data from the country.

The U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand increased 0.3 percent in November, beating market consensus, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November rose 0.2 percent from the previous month to 448.1 billion U.S. dollars.

However, the greenback was under pressure as market concerns accumulated amid the slumping oil prices, which fell to near seven-year low on Friday. Safe-haven currencies including Japanese yen and Swiss franc climbed against the U.S. dollar during the session.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers,was down 0.41 percent at 97.542 in late trading.

In late New York trading, the euro increased to 1.0994 dollars from 1.0936 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound rose to 1.5229 dollars from 1.5159 U.S. dollars in the previous session. The Australian dollar dropped to 0.7191 dollar from 0.7289 dollar.

The U.S. dollar bought 120.78 Japanese yen, lower than 121.62 yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar slipped to 0.9820 Swiss franc from 0.9891 Swiss franc, and it went up to 1.3735 Canadian dollars from 1.3618 Canadian dollars. Endit