Markets pare some gains at high points of the day

Indian equity markets have given up some gains from the high points of the day but are still managing to hold the forte with considerable gains. All the sectoral gauges continue to remain in cheerful mood. Market heavyweights like Reliance Industries, Infosys, TCS and L&T have moved higher by 1-2%. All the rate sensitives along with the technology counters have taken the lead. The telecom majors are rejoicing the report that the ‘New Telecom Policy’, which is likely to have no roaming charges for subscribers within the country and will allow for mobile numbers to be ported to any part of the country, is expected to be delayed till June 2012. Meanwhile, the PSU oil marketing companies are not showing any positive indication to the buzz that Petrol price may be hiked by about a rupee per litre with the anvil of New Year. Though the international prices have stabilized but the Indian currency has weakened against the US dollar making imports costlier.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 15,932.53, up by 193.83 points or 1.23%. The index has a touched a high and low of 15,956.93 and 15,761.18 respectively.  There were 29 stocks advancing against only 1 decline on the index.

The broader indices too were trading with decent gains; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices surged 0.91% and 1.13% respectively.

Buying was witnessed across the board. The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, TECk up by 1.74%, CG up by 1.59%, IT up by 1.48%, Realty up by 1.29%, and Auto was up by 1.26%. While, there was no loser on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bharti Airtel up by 3.34%, Hero MotoCorp up by 2.21%, TCS was up by 2.14%  Tata Motors up by 1.92% and Sterlite Industries up by 1.80%. On the flip side, Cipla marginally down by 0.03% was the lone loser on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Pranab Mukherjee, the Union Finance Minister, opined that there is a pressing need to make India’s development process more inclusive so as to create sustained opportunities for growth in the nation with a population of 1.2 billion people. Mukherjee is of the belief that there is an urgent need to improve the reach and quality of our social and physical infrastructure and India needs to invest an additional 3-4 percent of GDP on infrastructure to sustain current levels of growth and to equalize its benefits.

Improved infrastructure may lead to reduction in regional imbalances and improve the opportunities for the less privileged, while strengthening the role of government as an enabler. Development of quality infrastructure and ensuring its broad-based, regional and rural-urban balance is central to sustaining high growth.

The finance minister is also of the belief that initiatives like viability gap funding need to be adopted widely in all the infrastructure sectors which will boost private sector investment and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). He also affirmed that areas like power and energy, ports and regional airports, water resources, rural connectivity and urban infrastructure are in need of a quantum leap.

In its bid to ensure adequate flow of funds to infrastructure, the government has laid down guidelines for setting-up Infrastructure Debt Fund to attract new sources of long term providers of debt. The finance minister said that RBI, in consultation with the government, has also rationalized and liberalized the external commercial borrowings (ECB) policy during the current financial year.

Underscoring the fact that the ‘National Manufacturing Policy’ aimed at enhancing the share of the manufacturing sector in India’s GDP to 25 percent over the next ten years has been approved, Mukherjee said that it would require the sector to grow at 12 to 14 percent per annum creating millions of job opportunities, in the process. However, the finance minister said that India’s economic growth projections have been revised downwards in the range of 7.25-7.75 percent in the fiscal year 2011-12.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 4,769.75, higher by 55.75 points or 1.18%. The index has touched a high and low of 4,777.60 and 4,718.15 respectively.  There were 47 stocks advancing against 3 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Bharti Airtel up by 3.30%, Hero MotoCorp up by 2.28%, TCS up by 2.06%, Cairn up by 1.92% and Sterlite Industries up by 1.91%.

On the flip side, Ranbaxy down by 0.90%, Axis Bank down by 0.38% and Cipla down by 0.04% remained the losers on the index.

Most of the bourses in the Asian region were trading in the red; Shanghai Composite was down 9.70 points or 0.44% to 2,195.09, Seoul Composite was down 9.76 points or 0.52% to 1,857.16 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 7.91 points or 0.11% to 7,102.82.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 was up by 93.22 points or 0.99% to 8,478.

However, Stock markets in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore remained closed on Monday in observance of the Christmas holiday.