Benchmarks gyrates around neutral line ahead of economic survey

The Indian equity markets are gyrating around the neutral line in the late morning session ahead of the Economic Survey which will be tabled in the Parliament soon.On the global front, taking overnight cues from Wall Street, Asian shares rebounded as the Federal Reserve reassured markets of its commitment to strong monetary stimulus, although bit of caution is being witnessed on account of political gridlock in Italy. Back home, the traders were seen piling up position in FMCG, Capital Goods and FMCG, while selling was seen in Auto, Health Care, and IT sectors. In scrip specific development, Realty stocks such as Unitech, D B Realty edged higher on hopes the government will announce sops for the housing sector in Union Budget 2013-14.

In scrip specific actions, Fairfield Atlas was locked at 5% upper circuit after its board approved the delisting offer received from the parent company. Bharti Airtel surged on expectation that the failure to attract bidders for the GSM spectrum auction would benefit the existing telecom players. Bata India gained after Q4 results. Kingfisher Airlines slumped after losing foreign rights, domestic airport slots. Hindalco Industries dropped after declaring a lock-out at its Silvassa plant due to continuation of illegal strike by workmen. Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading near their psychological 5750 and 19,000 levels respectively.

The market breadth on BSE was showing negative trend with advances to declines in ratio of 831:1139.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19031.81, up by 16.67 points or 0.09% after trading in a range of 19137.39 and 19019.17. There were 14 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.55% and Small cap index has lost 0.47%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, FMCG up by 1.05%, Capital Goods up by 0.71% and Bankex up by 0.14% while, Auto down by 1.06%, Health Care down by 0.84% ,IT down by 0.70%, Metal down by 0.47% and Consumer Durables down by 0.43% were the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bharti Airtel up by 3.07%, ITC up by 1.46%, L&T up by 1.00%, Wipro up by 0.88% and Cipla up by 0.86%.

On the flip side, Gail India was down by 2.67%, Tata Motors was down by 2.37%, Hindalco Inds was down by 1.62%, ONGC was down by 1.50% and  Dr Reddys Lab was down by 1.48%  were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, to pave way for smooth roll-out of Goods and Service tax (GST), the committee on CST has recommended that all unsettled CST compensation cases of individual states of earlier years to be decided on case to case basis at the earliest. GST is a new indirect tax regime under which various levies would be subsumed into a single tax. The states want the central government to resolve the CST compensation issue before moving ahead with GST.

Earlier, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had constituted two committees to sort out contentious issues that hamper implementation of the GST. Similarly, earlier this month, state finance ministers had decided to prepare model legislation and set up three committees to sort out various issues for smooth roll-out of the GST. The states had agreed to a lower payment of Rs 34,000-crore for phasing out CST, pre-condition for rollout of the GST.

The government would bear 100 percent of the loss accrued to states in 2010-11 fiscal on account of lowering of CST, which includes 100 per cent compensation for 2010-11, 75 per cent for 2011-12 and 50 per cent for 2012-13.

As per Chidambaram, the GST legislation could be brought in by December this year and if the GST implementation takes a longer time then the government will revisit the CST compensation issue again or look at reverting to original CST rate of 4 per cent. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,753.55 down by 7.80 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 5,796.50 and 5,752.80. There were 15 stocks advancing against 33 declines while 2 stocks remains unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Bharti Airtel up by 2.92%, ITC up by 1.20%, L&T up by 1.13%, Wipro up by 0.91% and Cipla up by 0.90%.

On the flip side, Ranbaxy down by 4.42%, GAIL down by 2.78%, Tata Motors down by 2.45%, Cairn down by 2.38% and HCL Tech down by 1.85% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Shanghai Composite rose 5.02 points or 0.22% to 2,298.37, Hang Seng surged 92.21 points or 0.41% to 22,611.90, Jakarta Composite strengthened 35.94 points or 0.77% to 4,698.97, KLSE Composite added 1.90 points or 0.12% to 1,626.08, Straits Times jumped 11.78 points or 0.36% to 3,266.45, KOSPI Composite increased 7.63 points or 0.38% to 2,006.76 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 18.49 points or 0.23% to 7,902.39.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 was down by 87.10 points or 0.76% to 11,313.73.