Indian bourses continue to languish into negative territory

Indian equity benchmarks continued to languish into negative territory in early afternoon session as selling momentum in the equities persisted amidst weakness in global peers. The mood on the street remained cautious with government saying that names of over 2.09 lakh firms have been struck off from register of companies for failing to comply with regulatory requirements and action has been initiated to restrict operations of their bank accounts. Some caution also prevailed in the market with former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s statement that the biggest challenge is cleaning up the balance sheets of public sector banks. The market sentiment was further being weighed down by the weakness in rupee which dropped by another 9 paise to 64.22 against the US dollar in early trade due to fresh demand for the US currency from banks and importers. However, the broader indices were managing to hold their heads above water, with gains of around 30 percent each. In scrip specific development, GTL Infrastructure was up by over four percent after receiving an approval from SEBI, BSE and NSE for the proposed Scheme of Amalgamation of Chennai Network Infrastructure with itself.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in red, tracking the overnight sell-off on Wall Street amid geopolitical concerns following North Korea's nuclear test. Back home, the BSE Sensex is currently trading at 31641.15, down by 168.40 points or 0.53% after trading in a range of 31586.53 and 31713.50. There were 10 stocks advancing against 21 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.28%, while Small cap index was up by 0.26%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Basic Materials up by 0.53%, Consumer Durables up by 0.38%, Metal up by 0.35%, Energy up by 0.19% and Consumer Disc up by 0.12%, while Healthcare down by 1.06%, FMCG down by 1.03%, IT down by 0.47%, TECK down by 0.43% and Bankex down by 0.35% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.06%, Reliance Industries up by 0.57%, NTPC up by 0.50%, ONGC up by 0.46% and Coal India up by 0.41%. On the flip side, Sun Pharma down by 3.09%, ITC down by 2.20%, Lupin down by 2.14%, Tata Motors - DVR down by 1.94% and Axis Bank down by 1.39% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, in a bid to give a push to digital payment adoption, traders body the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has suggested measures including tax benefits to consumers as well as merchants and also recommended formulation of a digital payments policy. For achieving a target of Rs 2,500 crore digital transactions till March 2018, it said that the government needs to set up a regulatory authority for digital payment systems.

Traders’ body also suggested implementation of reward scheme for merchants and consumers, faster adoption of mobile QR code-based card acceptance solutions, formation of digital payments Board and an authority to monitor RuPay. CAIT also urged the government to implement the recommendations of the Watal Committee report on digital payments at the earliest. Besides, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal has stated that the Centre should provide tax rebates and incentives for consumers of certain types of digital payments (government receipts, petrol and education). He also said that there should also be tax rebates for merchants either in the form of sales tax.

In order to encourage universal adoption and socialisation of digital payments, Khandelwal said that the government should remove the requirement for banks to report electronic transactions and make consumers fearless to go for cashless economy. He also said that there should be no card refusal and no surcharge should be levied on digital payments as it would act as a deterrent to promote such payments. He also noted that there is a need to increase Point of Sale (PoS) terminals besides allowing non-bank finance companies to issue digital payment products. He further highlighted that today 96 percent of transactions in India are done in cash and the country has only about 25 lakh PoS terminals.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 9908.40, down by 43.80 points or 0.44% after trading in a range of 9882.55 and 9916.60. There were 19 stocks advancing against 32 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Indiabulls Housing Finance up by 2.02%, GAIL India up by 1.82%, Ultratech Cement up by 1.00%, Ambuja Cement up by 0.97% and Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 0.92%. On the flip side, Sun Pharma down by 2.89%, ITC down by 2.37%, Lupin down by 2.29%, Tata Motors - DVR down by 2.01% and Axis Bank down by 1.67% were the top losers.

The Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Hang Seng decreased 163.84 points or 0.59% to 27,577.51, Taiwan Weighted dropped 69.98 points or 0.66% to 10,547.86, Nikkei 225 was down by 27.84 points or 0.14% to 19,357.97, Jakarta Composite dipped 13.55 points or 0.23% to 5,816.43 and KOSPI Index shed 6.8 points or 0.29% to 2,319.82.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite increased 0.16 points to 3,384.47 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was up by 0.39 points or 0.02% to 1,770.02.