Benchmarks pare losses ahead of WPI inflation data

Indian equities have pared losses and are trading marginally in red the late morning session on weak global cues. Investors have remained cautious ahead of wholesale price index inflation data for March and corporate earnings from bluechips, including RIL and TCS. On the global front, Asian markets too were trading mostly in the red at this point of time as weaker-than-expected US and Chinese data raised concerns about the global economic outlook. Chinese economic recovery unexpectedly staggered in Q4 FY13 as the annual rate of growth eased back to 7.7 percent from the 7.9 percent pace set in the fourth quarter of previous year.

Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in Oil & Gas, PSU and Health Care, while selling was seen in Consumer Durables, IT and Teck sector. In scrip specific actions, Indian oil marketing companies such as Hindustan Petroleum Corp gained on hopes that a slump in crude prices would lower the cost of under-recoveries. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries surged as its subsidiary received US drug regulator's tentative approvals for generic version of Januvia and Glumetza tablets. State Bank of India soared after the bank said it has concluded the issue of $1 billion Fixed Rate Senior Unsecured Notes having a maturity of 5 years at a coupon of 3.25% per annum payable semi-annually. Suzlon Energy gained after the company said its shareholders have approved the corporate debt restructuring package. Cairn India slumped as US crude oil futures dropped below $90 a barrel mark for the first time in more than a month as economic growth unexpectedly eased in China, the world's second-largest crude oil user.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading just above their psychological 5,500 and 18,200 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing negative trend with advances to declines in ratio of 747: 772.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18207.50, down by 35.06 points or 0.19% after trading in a range of 18216.72 and 18144.22. There were 15 stocks advancing against 15 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.12% and Small cap index was up by 0.12%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil & Gas up by 1.48%, PSU up by 0.73%, Health Care up by 0.41%, FMCG up by 0.40% and Realty up by 0.16% while, Consumer Durables down by 1.86%, IT down by 1.79%, Teck down by 1.36%, Auto down by 1.14% and Metal down by 0.91%were the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ONGC up by 2.33%, SBI up by 1.29%, HDFC up by 1.15%, Gail India up by 1.00% and Bajaj Auto up by 0.96%.

On the flip side, Tata Motors was down by 3.52%, Infosys was down by 2.72%, Sterlite Inds was down by 1.81%, TCS was down by 1.79% and Hindalco Inds was down by 1.75% and were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, In order to remove the bottlenecks in the way of economic expansion, Plan panel and India@75 will jointly launch an initiative - India Backbone Implementation Network (IBIN) on April 19. The proposed network will seek to resolve the bottlenecks identified by the Planning Commission like land related problems, other infrastructure issues and try to build a multi-stakeholder consensus over these matters.

IBIN is an initiative of the Planning Commission and India@75, a grassroots initiative of the CII, for realizing the dream of an inclusive, sustainable and developed India by the year 2022. IBIN seeks to build a network of partners to create capability to manage effective stakeholder dialogues, resolve dispute, conduct policy impact analysis and seed new techniques into the service delivery system.

The IBIN, structurally an organization, is essentially a process that will promote widespread capabilities in the country to systematically convert confusion to coordination, contention to collaboration, and intentions to implementation. The organization will build a knowledge base of tools, techniques and examples to systematically analyse situations or challenges and proactively create solutions.

The network will work on the principle that in a highly diverse democratic country, consensus and partnerships among multi-faceted and diverse stakeholders are the only ways to progressively move ahead.  Meanwhile, the IBIN model is inspired by the Total Quality Movement (TQM) model in Japan. The TQM established Japan as an international benchmark of quality in less than two decades.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,518.80 down by 9.75 points or 0.18% after trading in a range of 5,523.95 and 5,500.30.

There were 24 stocks advancing against 26 declines on the index. The top gainers of the Nifty were BPCL up by 4.18%, ONGC up by 2.66%, Bank of Baroda up by 1.93%, Ultra Cement up by 1.44% and HDFC up by 1.43%.

On the flip side, Tata Motors down by 3.65%, Infosys down by 3.19%, TCS down by 2.60%, Cairn down by 2.37%, and Sesa Goa down by 1.79% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red. Shanghai Composite declined by 20.32 points or 0.92% to 2,186.46, Hang Seng tumbled by 330.84 points or 1.50% to 21,758.21, Jakarta Composite dropped 32.83 points or 0.66% to 4,904.38, Nikkei 225 slumped by 148.18 points or 1.10% to 13,336.96, Straits Times slipped 8.85 by points or 0.27% to 3,287.30, KOSPI Composite dipped 0 .25 points or 0.01% to 1,923.79 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 48.83 points or 0.62% to 7,772.75.

On the flip side, KLSE Composite was up by 0.07 points or 0.01% to 1,698.60.