Sensex, Nifty maintain gains in late morning session

Indian equity benchmarks maintained their gains in late morning session, with both Sensex and Nifty trading in green terrain. Positive cues from other Asian markets helped key indices to remain higher. Traders remained positive, after the government said in Parliament that profitability of public sector banks has improved on a consolidated basis after amalgamation. Adding some optimism, ratings agency ICRA said that domestic IT services companies are expected to log a dollar revenue growth of 9-12 per cent in FY2022, driven by accelerated demand for digital technologies from enterprises globally and partly on account of low base of last year due to the COVID-19 impact.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in green, after Members of the Bank of Japan's Monetary Policy Board said that the country's economy is trending in a positive direction but remains at risk due to Covid-19 and its variants, minutes from the bank's meeting on October 27 and 28 revealed on Wednesday.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 56625.06, up by 306.05 points or 0.54% after trading in a range of 56471.03 and 56820.89. There were 23 stocks advancing against 7 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.12%, while Small cap index was up by 1.38%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 1.99%, Auto up by 1.48%, Industrials up by 1.46%, Metal up by 1.37% and Basic Materials up by 1.30%, while there were no losing sectoral indices on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bajaj Finance up by 2.41%, Sun Pharma up by 1.75%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.70%, Tata Steel up by 1.62% and Indusind Bank up by 1.45%. On the flip side, Power Grid down by 3.39%, Wipro down by 1.10%, Nestle down by 0.77%, HDFC down by 0.54% and ITC down by 0.21% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Union Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh said India has added 8,530.92 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy (RE) capacity, including large hydro units, during April-November of the current fiscal, which is higher than 8,058.10 MW added in the entire 2020-21. India had added 9,143.30 MW of RE, including large hydro, in 2019-20 and 8,866.33 MW in 2020-21.

He stated that against the target of 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022, a total of 150.54 GW of the renewable energy capacity, including large hydro, has been installed in the country as on November 30, 2021.

Besides, he said that the Government of India has made no commitment to phasing out coal by 2030. However, he stated that the coal-based thermal power capacity that has been retired so far is 15,241.8 MW. Talking about financing clean energy, he said India expects developed countries to provide a climate finance of $1 trillion per year to the developing countries.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 16867.55, up by 96.70 points or 0.58% after trading in a range of 16819.50 and 16920.35. There were 38 stocks advancing against 12 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 2.76%, Eicher Motors up by 2.72%, Hindalco up by 2.64%, Bajaj Finance up by 2.44% and UPL up by 2.18%. On the flip side, Power Grid down by 3.34%, Wipro down by 1.04%, Nestle down by 0.66%, SBI Life Insurance down by 0.57% and Adani Ports & SEZ down by 0.52% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; Straits Times added 0.96 points or 0.03% to 3,086.04, Hang Seng gained 42.37 points or 0.18% to 23,013.70, Taiwan Weighted rose 31.89 points or 0.18% to 17,821.16, KOSPI advanced 4.70 points or 0.16% to 2,979.73 and Jakarta Composite was up by 15.79 points or 0.24% to 6,570.10. On the other hand, Nikkei 225 fell 11.54 points or 0.04% to 28,506.05 and Shanghai Composite was down by 5.93 points or 0.16% to 3,619.20.