Sensex, Nifty extends earlier losses

After a weak start and a subsequent smart recovery, the markets have now faltered and slipped deeper into the red due to heavy selling in several stocks from metal, realty, capital goods, power and banking sectors. Moreover, defeat of the Congress Party in the Gujarat State Assembly Elections appearing to be weighing on market sentiments. In currency market, rupee depreciated against American currency erasing earlier session’s gains on the back increasing dollar demand from importers to meet month-end needs. On sectoral front shares from consumer durables, automobile and oil sectors too have declined sharply, FMCG and information technology stocks were also off their earlier highs. Select healthcare stocks are trading firm with notable gains. In global markets, Asian shares retreated from near 17-month high on Thursday and commodities fell as negotiations to avert a US fiscal crunch turned negative, putting at risk a timely solution as well as the health of the world's largest economy. Back home, the market breadth favoring negative trend; there were 1,032 shares on the gaining side against 1,386 shares on the losing side while 91 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19,403.63 down by 72.37 points or 0.37% after trading in a range of 19,520.51 and 19,335.72. There were 7 stocks advancing against 23 declines on the index.

The broader indices were also trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.16% and Small cap index was down by 0.38%.

The only gaining sectoral index on the BSE was, Healthcare up by 0.57%, while, Realty down by 1.04%, Capital Goods down by 0.78%, Power down by 0.77%, Metal down by 0.65% and Consumer Durables down by 0.52% were the top losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Cipla up by 1.63%, Hindustan Unilever up by 0.76%, Jindal Steel up by 0.76%, Maruti Suzuki up by 0.60% and TCS up by 0.31%.

On the flip side, Sterlite Industries was down by 1.75%, BHEL was down by 1.26%, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.19%, Tata Steel was down by 1.05% and L&T was down by 0.93% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, the government’s indirect tax collection comprising excise, customs and services tax grew at a moderate rate of 16.8 per cent to Rs 2.92 lakh crore in the April-November period, against the targeted annual growth of 27 per cent. Collection of indirect taxes in the first eight months of previous financial year was Rs 2.50 lakh crore.

While excise has yielded Rs 1,08,470 crore during April-November 2012, collection from customs and services tax worked out to be about Rs 1,04,864 crore and Rs 78,774 crore, respectively. In November, indirect tax collection rose by 17.2 per cent to Rs 36,081 crore as compared to Rs 30,790 crore. The government realized Rs 13,012 crore from customs, Rs 13,760 crore from excise and Rs 9,309 crore from service tax.  

Earlier this week, the government had said that it would be difficult to achieve the corporate tax, customs and excise duty collection target as projected in the Budget because of the subdued corporate profits. Further, due to the sluggish macroeconomic environment, trend growth in the mid-year is lower than estimated on the tax revenue side.

The government in the current fiscal has planned to collect Rs 5.05 lakh crore from customs, excise and services tax, an increase of 27 percent over realization in the previous fiscal. The target for customs collection has fixed at Rs 1.87 lakh crore, for excise Rs 1.93 lakh crore and for service tax Rs 1.24 lakh crore in the current fiscal.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,902.40 down by 27.20 points or 0.46% after trading in a range of 5,937.60 and 5,881.45. There were 10 stocks advancing against 40 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Cipla up by 1.68%, Hindustan Unilever up by 0.77%, Maruti Suzuki up by 0.71%, Ranbaxy up by 0.64% and Jindal Steel up by 0.62%.

On the flip side, Ambuja Cement down by 2.13%, JP Associates down by 1.79%, Sesa Goa down by 1.62%, Bank of Baroda down by 1.35% and Axis Bank down by 1.26% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Hang Seng contracted 0.25%, Jakarta Composite tumbled 0.90%, KLSE Composite slipped 0.10%, Nikkei 225 dropped 1.19% and Taiwan Weighted was down by 1.07%. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite up by 0.06%, Straits Times was up by 0.23% and KOSPI Composite surged 0.32%.