Indian equities continue to trade weak in late morning session

Volatility continued on street as benchmarks after making an opening on a positive note, and continued to trade on a marginally weak note in late -morning trade as sentiments got dampened after global credit rating agency Moody’s has said that uncomfortably high inflation coupled with supply constraints is impacting India’s growth that has slowed to 4.4 percent in the April-June quarter this year. Sentiments also remained down-beat after the RBI’s governor Raghuram Rajan has questioned central banks across the globe, whether current ultra-low interest rates are the right way to return to growth after the financial crisis, sending jitters back home. However, Rupee continued to strengthen for the third day today, trading above the Rs 62/dollar in early trade.The rupee was trading at Rs 61.93 compared with previous close of Rs 62.08 per dollar.

On the global front, Asian markets too were trading mostly higher at this point of time with stock markets in Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore trading notably higher. However, the Japanese Nikkei remained lower as the yen strengthened against the dollar. Back home, traders were buying, Oil & Gas, IT and Realty while selling were seen in Banking, Metal and Power on the BSE. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 5,850 and 19,800 levels respectively.

The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 845:644. The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19817.71, down by 76.14 points or 0.38% after trading in a range of 19981.57 and 19796.39. There were 14 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.29% and Small cap index gained 0.44%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil & Gas up by 0.92%, IT up by 0.67%, Realty up by 0.39%, Health Care up by 0.37% and Teck up by 0.36%, while Bankex down by 1.56%, Metal down by 0.46%, Power down by 0.39% and FMCG down by 0.23% were the losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Hero MotoCorp up by 1.96%, Sun Pharma up by 1.38%, ONGC up by 0.99%, Sesa Goa up by 0.83% and Bajaj Auto up by 0.82%. On the flip side, BHEL was down by 2.76%, ICICI Bank was down by 2.48%, Bharti Airtel was down by 2.20% ,HDFC Bank was down by 1.74%, and HDFC  was down by 1.33% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, In a move to develop the country’s infrastructure sector, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has set an expenditure target of Rs 11,885 crore for the current fiscal, which also includes flagship road building scheme programme National Highways Development Project (NHDP). The NHAI has to implement various road projects of about 50,000 kms, entailing a total expenditure of about Rs 2 lakh crore, half of which has already been spent for the preparation and widening of about 21,000 km roads.

On the other hand, NHDP, setting up to rehabilitate, upgrade and widen major highways in India to international standards has set a target to build 34,108 km roads in four phases. So far, NHDP has completed widening of 7,501 km road projects while work is in progress on 11,459 km. At present, government is concerned over the slow progress of projects under NHDP and had recently suggested the road ministry to take measures for expediting projects to attract private investment.

Referring to North-South & East-West Corridors road project, NHAI said that 611 km of the project is under construction and only 372 km has been left for award of work, while the major chunk of 6,159 km has already been completed. The total length of the NS-EW network is 7,142 km as North-South (NS) Corridor connects Srinagar with Kanyakumari, while the East-West (EW) corridor connects Porbandar with Silchar. Earlier, the NS-EW project was scheduled to be completed in 2009 but was delayed due to various hurdles like land acquisition and environment clearances.

Infrastructure development is today recognised as essential to sustain India’s economic growth. Within infrastructure segments, roads development is seen as one of the important initiatives to boost the country’s economy. Roads are the dominant mode of transportation in India today as they carry almost 90 percent of the country’s passenger traffic and 65 percent of its freight. Meanwhile, for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) the government has set the $1-trillion investment target for the infrastructure sector.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,864.70 down by 17.55 points or 0.30% after trading in a range of 5,909.20 and 5,854.95. There were 23 stocks advancing against 26 declines while 1 stock remained unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were BPCL up by 8.64%, HCL Tech up by 1.84%, Hero Moto Co up by 1.77%, Ranbaxy up by 1.77% and Sun Pharmaceuticals up by 1.50%. On the flip side, BHEL down by 2.82%, ICICI Bank down by 2.49%,  Bharti Airtel down by 2.21%, HDFC Bank down by 1.70% and SBI down by 1.27% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 2.70 points or 0.13% to 2,158.51, Hang Seng increased 21.60 points or 0.09% to 23,146.63, Jakarta Composite strengthened 30.05 points or 0.68% to 4,435.94, KLSE Composite jumped 4.76 points or 0.27% to 1,778.92, Straits Times surged 22.08 points or 0.69% to 3,216.39, Seoul Composite added 5.93 points or 0.30% to 2,013.25 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 34.06 points or 0.42% to 8,218.74.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 declined 34.59 points or 0.23% to 14,764.53.