Bourses enlarge losses in late afternoon session

The Indian equity benchmarks enlarged their losses in late afternoon session dragged by Metal, Power and Utilities shares and ahead of domestic retail inflation numbers. Traders were cautious even after private report stated that India and Oman agreed to undertake a joint feasibility study, before going ahead with a preferential trade deal on limited goods. Oman had requested India for a preferential trade agreement on limited items, where both nations can discuss reduction in tariff of some items of export interest. Sector wise, tyre sector remain in focused, as credit rating agency CRISIL in its latest report has said that the capital expenditure of tyre makers is expected to increase to around Rs 5,000 crore this fiscal (FY23) as against around Rs 3,700 crore annually in the preceding two fiscals on the back of improving demand. On the global front, all Asian markets and European markets were trading lower after U.S. consumer price inflation data released overnight did little to ease investor worries over the outlook for inflation and interest rates.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 52886.76, down by 1201.63 points or 2.22% after trading in a range of 52869.53 and 53632.55. There were 3 stocks advancing against 27 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index declined 2.83%, while Small cap index was down by 2.39%.

The top losing sectoral indices on the BSE were Metal down by 4.79%, Power down by 3.79%, Utilities down by 3.68%, Consumer Durables down by 3.59% and Basic Materials was down by 3.51%, while there were no gainers on sectoral indices on the BSE.

The few gainers on the Sensex were TCS up by 0.88%, Asian Paints up by 0.27% and HCL Tech up by 0.23%. On the flip side, Indusind Bank down by 6.50%, Tata Steel down by 5.07%, Bajaj Finance down by 4.81%, SBI down by 3.84% and Bajaj Finserv down by 3.80% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, expressing urgent need to build an ‘Innovation Ecosystem’ for the Start-ups, Minister of State for the Ministry of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh has said that future belongs to technology-driven economy.

Jitendra Singh said that both the Start-ups and Women entrepreneurs have a very high priority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, underlining the efforts being taken by the Department of Science and Technology to promote them to their full potential. The Minister Pledged complete support to the Start-ups by proactively reaching out to them and assured full financial support and even offered to change the rules to strengthen the support system.

Meanwhile, Jitendra Singh also launched the SSR and SRIMAN Guidelines. Scientific Social Responsibility, SSR as an institutional mechanism, is a significant step to reach out to the widest-spectrum of stakeholders of S&T with knowledge, human resources and infrastructure to make an effective use of existing assets for the benefit of society.

Besides, he said that the broad objective of the Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) Guidelines is to harness the latent potential of the scientific community on voluntary basis for strengthening science and society linkages and thereby making S&T ecosystem responsive to societal needs. It primarily involves bridging science-society, science-science and society-science gaps, thereby bringing trust, partnership and responsibility of science at an accelerated pace towards achieving social goals.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 15763.05, down by 404.05 points or 2.50% after trading in a range of 15757.65 and 16041.95. There were 3 stocks advancing against 47 stocks declining on the index.

The few gainers on Nifty were TCS up by 0.39%, Asian Paints up by 0.23% and HCL Tech up by 0.08%. On the flip side, Adani Ports down by 6.90%, Indusind Bank down by 6.54%, Hindalco down by 5.31%, Tata Steel down by 5.01% and Bajaj Finance down by 4.71% were the top losers.

All Asian markets were trading lower, Nikkei 225 slipped 464.92 points or 1.77% to 25,748.72, Hang Seng decreased 444.23 points or 2.24% to 19,380.34, Taiwan Weighted dropped 389.57 points or 2.43% to 15,616.68, Jakarta Composite lost 216.36 points or 3.17% to 6,599.84, Straits Times trembled 48.88 points or 1.52% to 3,177.19, KOSPI fell 42.19 points or 1.63% to 2,550.08 and Shanghai Composite was down by 3.71 points or 0.12% to 3,054.99.

European markets were trading lower, UK’s FTSE 100 decreased 152.15 points or 2.07% to 7,195.51, France’s CAC decreased 128.76 points or 2.05% to 6,140.97 and Germany’s DAX was down by 261.68 points or 1.89% to 13,566.96.