MUMBAI: Benchmarks staged sharp recovery in the afternoon but still ended in the red after traders covered short positions in realty, power and banking space.
Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex ended at 8716.42, down 123.45 points or 1.40 per cent. The index touched an intra-day high of 8745.23 and a low of 8467.43.
National Stock Exchange’s Nifty closed at 2662, down 0.78 per cent or 20.90 points. The 50-share index hit an intra-day high of 2672.90 and a low of 2570.70.
BSE Midcap Index was down 1.67 per cent and BSE Smallcap Index fell 1.54 per cent.
Amongst the sectoral indices, BSE FMCG Index closed 0.80 per cent, BSE Realty Index was up 0.41 per cent, BSE Power Index ended 0.13 per cent up.
BSE Auto Index ended 2.81 per cent lower, BSE IT Index slipped 2.51 per cent and BSE Oil & gas Index fell 2.51 per cent.
The currency extended a three-week decline after India’s deadliest terrorist attacks in 15 years that lasted almost for four days.
Rupee closed at a record low as a slide in equities fueled concern investors will increase sales of local shares. The currency extended a three-week decline after India’s deadliest terrorist attacks in 15 years that lasted almost for four days.
Sensex slid 2.8% today, taking this year’s loss to 56.4%. The rupee dropped 0.4% to close at 50.29 per dollar, according to the reports. It fell as low as 50.355 in intraday trading.
FIIs sold Indian equities worth a record US$13.7bn more than they bought this year, according to the SEBI data.
New Delhi, (PTI) Services and construction sectors helped the Indian economy expand at 7.6 per cent in the second quarter of the current fiscal, prompting government to term the growth as "healthy and satisfactory" even though it was the lowest in any three-month period in the last four years.
The economic growth, as measured by expansion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), may be seen as slowing down as it clocked a 9.3 per cent a year ago, but it was much better than expected by many analysts, given the global financial meltdown.
"This is a satisfactory and healthy growth rate having regard to global slowdown," Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters.
For the second half, the economy registered a 7.8 per cent growth rate, compared with 9.3 per cent a year ago, much in line with official projections for 7-8 per cent for the fiscal.
However, analysts said services, which came to the aid of the economy, are expected to slow down in the coming quarters and the Reserve Bank (RBI) and the government must come out with some stimulating measures to perk up the economy.
"Going forward the services sector is likely to slow down, particularly the hotel construction and transport," Crisil Principal Economist D K Joshi said.
Moody's economy.Com said the government and the RBI should come out with stimulating measures to induce growth.
While construction sector grew by 9.7 per cent in the second quarter from 11.8 per cent a year ago, services sectors displayed similar pattern of high growth, though slightly slower than last year.
However, manufacturing grew by just five per cent in the second quarter from 9.2 per cent a year ago and halved to five per cent in the second half from robust 10.9 per cent.
Chidambaram admitted that manufacturing sector remains a problem area. PTI
NEW DELHI: Rating agency ICRA on Tuesday assigned highest credit quality rating to Rs 10,000 crore short term debt programme of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group's financial services firm Reliance Capital Ltd.
"While the A1+ rating takes a note of RCL's moderate asset liability management profile on account of its higher reliance on short term funds to build consumer finance business, it draws comfort from its unrealised gains on its investment portfolio and higher financial flexibility," ICRA said.
AI+ rating indicates the highest-credit quality rating. Instruments rated in this category carry the lowest credit risk in short term.
The rating factors in the RCL's association with Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani (ADA) group, strong capitalisation levels amongst Indian non-banking finance companies, and its moderate gearing, it added.
It also takes into account the group's strong presence in various businesses in financial service domain like asset management, life insurance, general insurance, equity broking, distribution of financial products and proprietary investments.
The rating agency added that RCL's short term liquidity profile remains moderate as it has been resorting to the short term borrowing to fund its long term consumer finance business while also supporting other group companies especially life insurance business.
It further said that going forward, RCL's rating would be sensitive to its ability to maintain comfortable asset quality of the consumer finance business, and to manage its liquidity profile while supporting the group companies besides scaling up the consumer finance business.
New Delhi (PTI): Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector oil company that shut down all of its petrol pumps earlier this year because of huge losses, wants to restart selling petrol and diesel after margins on the two fuels turned positive.
"Reliance has informed us that they are keen on reopening their outlets," Petroleum Secretary R S Pandey told reporters here.
The Mukesh Ambani-run company had shut all of its 1,432 petrol pumps around March after it could not compete with public sector companies, who sold fuel at rates much lower than their cost, as they got government subsidies.
However, with the fall in international oil prices, margins on both petrol and diesel have turned positive. State-run oil companies Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum are making a neat profit of Rs 9.86 a litre on petrol and Rs 0.70 per litre on diesel.
Essar Oil, the second-largest private fuel retailer in the country, had begun reopening its petrol pumps when international crude oil prices started declining in September.
Pandey said Essar had written to him informing that 500 pumps have resumed operations. It plans to open most of its 1,250 fuel stations by the end of December.
The company began reactivating most of its outlets in southern and western India from August and would double its retail network by the end of December, taking it to 1,250 by January 2009.
Rapidly plunging crude oil prices has made it viable for the three private retailers - Reliance Industries, Essar Oil and Shell - to get back in the retail market. The private firms can now even offer fuel at lower prices, compared to their state-owned rivals.
In 2002, the Government had awarded fuel retailing rights to companies that had invested Rs 2,000 crore in petroleum infrastructure in India.
Besides Reliance, Essar and Shell, Cairn India and Numaligarh Refinery were eligible to set up petrol and diesel retail outlets.
Reliance had applied for permission to set up 5,849 petrol pumps, while Essar sought approval for 1,700 outlets. Shell had obtained permission for 2,000 pumps.
State-run firms operate 34,304 pumps in the country.
When crude oil prices climbed and the difference between domestic retail price and cost of product widened to some Rs 23-24 a litre, Reliance shut all its outlets, while Essar restricted sales to just a 100 of its outlets. Shell, which had about 50 stations, had reviewed its expansion plans in India and decided not to open any more petroleum outlets.
With the price of crude having fallen to USD 50 and with the government not reducing retail prices of petrol and diesel, the private retailers want to reopen their petrol stations.
