Sensex, Nifty hold firm trade in late morning session

Indian benchmark indices held their earlier gains in late morning session and were hovering in a narrow range with a strong bias on account of increased buying by retailers following RIL’s robust numbers. Besides, better-than-estimated results by Wipro also gave confidence to investors. Sentiments also remained optimistic with the private report stating that strong import growth in June points to continued recovery in India's domestic demand and also indicating that economic expansion will accelerate from the April-June quarter. Besides, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley released the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP). The Action Plan aims to transform cross-border clearance ecosystem through efficient, transparent, risk-based, co-ordinated, digital, seamless and technology driven procedures which are supported by advanced sea ports, airports, and land borders.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in red as concerns about U.S. policy uncertainty and ECB President Mario Draghi's cautious comments on tweaking stimulus sapped investors' appetite for risk. Back home, in scrip specific development, Videocon Industries was trading higher after the company’s telecom arm - Videocon Telecom has entered into eKYC business for Aadhaar-linked services and set a revenue target of up to Rs 100 crore from the segment in the next two years.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 32051.00, up by 146.60 points or 0.46% after trading in a range of 31931.34 and 32062.23. There were 15 stocks advancing against 16 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.29%, while Small cap index was up by 0.34%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Energy up by 2.04%, IT up by 1.46%, TECK up by 1.07%, Oil & Gas up by 0.93% and Consumer Durables up by 0.74%, while Telecom down by 0.78%, Realty down by 0.35%, Power down by 0.14% and Healthcare down by 0.04% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Wipro up by 6.62%, Reliance Industries up by 3.48%, Coal India up by 2.13%, TCS up by 1.15% and Infosys up by 1.05%. On the flip side, Lupin down by 2.23%, Bharti Airtel down by 2.14%, Cipla down by 1.15%, Power Grid down by 1.14% and Tata Steel down by 0.58% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Union Minister of Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitley has released the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP) on July 20, 2017. After releasing this National Action Plan, he said that the entry into force of the WTO-Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on February 22, 2017 is a major milestone for the global trading system. He also said that India looks forward to ensuring compliance with the TFA and also impetus to trade facilitation. 

The minister has said that the NTFAP gives a time bound map, not only for implementing TFA, but also for the country’s initiatives for trade facilitation and ease of doing business which goes beyond TFA. Adding further, he said that the aim of the action plan is to transform cross border clearance ecosystem through efficient, transparent, risk based, coordinated, digital, seamless and technology driven procedures which are supported by state-of-the-art sea ports, airports and land borders.

Jaitley further stated that the objectives to be achieved by National Action Plan are improvement in ease of doing business by reduction in cargo release time and cost, move towards paperless regulatory environment, transparent and predictable legal regime and improved investment climate through better infrastructure. He also noted that the action plan lists out specific activities which would be carried out by all regulatory agencies like Customs, FSSAI, Drug Controller, Plant Quarantine, DGFT etc in time bound manner. He added that this co-ordination among all the stakeholders is needed to achieve the objective of trade facilitation.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 9911.75, up by 38.45 points or 0.39% after trading in a range of 9878.80 and 9919.85. There were 24 stocks advancing against 25 stocks declining on the index, while 2 stocks remained unchanged.

The top gainers on Nifty were Wipro up by 6.54%, Reliance Industries up by 3.49%, Coal India up by 2.29%, HCL Tech up by 1.85% and TCS up by 1.24%. On the flip side, Lupin down by 2.23%, Bharti Airtel down by 2.22%, Cipla down by 1.30%, Power Grid down by 0.94% and Indiabulls Housing Finance down by 0.82% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Taiwan Weighted decreased 47.66 points or 0.45% to 10,451.70, Nikkei 225 decreased 33.92 points or 0.17% to 20,110.67, Jakarta Composite decreased 31.64 points or 0.54% to 5,793.57 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI decreased 2.06 points or 0.12% to 1,753.57.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite increased 1.04 points or 0.03% to 3,245.91, Hang Seng increased 1.78 points or 0.01% to 26,741.99 and KOSPI Index increased 4.62 points or 0.19% to 2,446.46.