Stock Market Highlights: The Sensex and Nifty made a smart recovery in the afternoon trade on Monday, on the back of a rally in blupechip heavyweights. The Sensex closed 113.31 points higher at 36,582.74 while the Nifty ended above the 10,900-mark. Shares of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries closed 3.5% higher at Rs 1,290.93 to emerge as the biggest gainer in the Sensex. Shares of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications plunged in trade on Monday, after the firm filed for insolvency on Friday. RCom shares closed 35% lower at Rs 7.55 on NSE.
Meanwhile, Asia stocks hovered near four-month highs on Monday after a mixed performance on Wall Street at the close of last week, while the dollar firmed against the yen following strong U.S. job and manufacturing data. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was almost flat. It had scaled a four-month peak on Friday along with a surge in its global peers. Trade was subdued with many of the region’s markets closed for the Lunar New Year. China’s financial markets are closed all week, while those in South Korea are shut until Thursday, Reuters reported. We bring to you LIVE updates.
The Sensex and Nifty made a smart recovery in the afternoon trade on Monday, on the back of a rally in blupechip heavyweights. The Sensex closed 113.31 points higher at 36,582.74 while the Nifty ended above the 10,900-mark. Shares of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries closed 3.5% higher at Rs 1,290.93 to emerge as the biggest gainer in the Sensex. Shares of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications plunged in trade on Monday, after the firm filed for insolvency on Friday. RCom shares closed 35% lower at Rs 7.55 on NSE. A look at LIVE Sensex heatmap.
Sensex and Nifty made a smart recovery in the afternoon trade on Monday, after trading lower in for most of the session. The Sensex is up 133 points to 36,602.03 while the Nifty is trading above the 10,900-mark. Shares of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries are trading 3.5% higher at Rs 1,293.55, to emerge among the biggest gainers in the Sensex. Shares of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications plunged in trade on Monday, after the firm filed for insolvency on Friday. A look at LIVE Sensex heatmap.
Union Budget 2019 has promised something for everyone. From income tax rebate for the middle-class, Rs 6,000 promised for small farmers, a pension scheme of Rs 3,000 per month after the age of 60 years for unorganised sector workers, deductions for medical expenses for senior citizens, raise in student loan interest, and home loan interest, and more. However, Kirit S Parikh, Chairman of Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe) and former Planning Commission Member, raised a pertinent question: How are these promises to be financed?
Also read: How will budget 2019’s tall promises be fulfilled?
After the Narendra Modi-led government on Friday, proposed to bring in a single stamp duty rate for all financial securities transactions and its collection at one place through stock exchanges, experts say that the step will help in bringing down the cost of investing. "The move to levy Stamp Duty on financial securities transactions only on one instrument relating to one transaction will make Equity Market Investments more affordable for investors and streamline the process of collection of this duty, and increase the level of ease of doing business in India,” Shrini Viswanath, CTO & Co-Founder, Upstox, a discount stock broking firm, said in a note.
Read full story here: This new duty on demat share purchase may make it cheaper to invest; here's how
Shares of India's major jewellery manufacturer Titan gained in trade on Monday, after the firm reported strong Q3 results in the latest quarter. Titan shares gained more than 5.5% to Rs 1,049. Titan Company Ltd has reported a 35% jump in consolidated profit for December quarter to Rs 416 crore, beating an ET Now poll estimate of Rs 391 crore. The firm had reported Rs 308.21 crore in the year ago period. Sales for the quarter rose to Rs 5,632 crore compared with Rs 4,174 crore in the same quarter last year. Jewellery business has seen a robust 36.8% growth in income at Rs 4,890 crore for the third quarter, compared with Rs 3,576 crore in the comparabe period previous fiscal.
The Centre’s newly launched PM Kisan Nidhi Yojana, an assured income support scheme for farmers, will barely cover the per-hectare expenses on pesticides in many states, leave alone operational or overall cultivation costs. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, farmers spend some Rs6,200/hectare for applying pesticides on paddy during the summer and winter seasons in a year. Amid the rising cost of cultivation, while the income support is too little, the government may also find it more challenging to transfer the amount since most states do not have any credible data base of farm land holdings.
Also read: PM Kisan Samman Nidhi: New scheme barely able to cover the cost of pesticides per hectare
The rupee Monday depreciated by 48 paise to 71.73 in early trade on the forex market ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's policy review meet and lower opening in domestic equity market. Forex traders said strengthening of the US dollar against some currencies overseas weighed on the local unit. However, easing crude prices and fresh foreign fund inflows capped the losses for the domestic unit. At the Interbank Foreign Exchange, the rupee opened on a weak note at 71.57 then fell further to 71.73 against the US dollar, showing a decline of 48 paise over its previous closing.
Shares of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications plunged in trade on Monday, after the firm filed for insolvency on Friday. Rcom share price plunged by more than 48% to Rs 7.60 in the morning trade. Reliance Comunications (RCom) on Friday said that its board had decided to approach the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for fast-tracking of its debt resolution plan. The company said its board had resolved to take the NCLT route for early resolution of its debt as it was impossible to get 100% approval of all the 40 lenders despite over 45 meetings taking place over the past one year. RCom attributed “lack of 100% approvals and consensus, as mandated by RBI’s February 12, 2018 circular, on all important issues, amongst over 40 lenders, Indian and foreign despite the passage of 12 months and over 45 meetings”.
Also read: Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications lays out debt resolution plan
Shares in India's Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd plunged on Monday to their lowest in over five years as claims of financial mismanagement and broader sectoral woes continue to plague the home loan provider. Investigative media outlet Cobrapost had alleged last week that loans from Indian state banks were diverted by Dewan to shell companies, including those linked to its controlling shareholders. Dewan has, however, denied lending to shell companies and said it had not received any communication from the government in relation to an investigation. Separately, Dewan said on Saturday it would sell a 9.15 percent stake in housing finance firm Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd to private equity funds managed by Blackstone Group LP. Wadhawan Global Capital will also sell its 70 percent stake in Aadhar Housing to Blackstone. (Reuters reported)
The domestic stock markets –Sensex and Nifty–opened lower on Monday, tracking weak global cues. The Sensex is down about 100 points to 36,369.43 while the Nifty is trading below the 10,850-mark. Yes Bank share price slumped by more than 5% to Rs 175.60, while Heromotocorp shares tanked by more than 3% to Rs 2,720 in the morning trade. A look at LIVE Sensex heatmap.
Indian policymakers tried to strike a balance between fiscal prudence and responding to the agrarian distress in the Interim Budget. For starters, the fiscal deficit for the FY19 came in close to our expectations, narrowing to 3.4% of GDP (JP Morgan: 3.3%) from 3.5% of GDP in the previous year, thereby belying some market fears of a large fiscal slippage. In fact, net of asset sales, the Centre consolidated its deficit by 0.2% of GDP in FY19. Furthermore, the FY20 budget included a new programme of cash-transfers for farmers, against a backdrop of rural distress.
Read more: Budget & MPC: Interim budget tries to strike a balance but the real story lies off balance sheet
Any hopes that the telecom industry had of reduction in levies such as licence fee, spectrum usage charges or some form of further moratorium on the payment of deferred spectrum charges seem dashed now. Budget, it is quite clear that the department of telecommunications (DoT) is not going to bring about any reduction in levies as promised in the new telecom policy document. The numbers on telecom earnings show that with declining tariffs in the industry, the sector’s revenues are falling and with that the government’s revenue as well. As a result, there’s hardly any room for the government to reduce levies.
Also read: Golden goose: Telecom firms may continue to bleed as missed revenue targets leave no room for cut in levies
Most of the criticism of the CSO raising its estimates of GDP just the day before the Interim Budget, not surprisingly, was about the possibility that this was done to give the government more room to show a lower deficit number. This, however, didn’t happen since, while the FY18 nominal GDP was raised to Rs 171 lakh crore from Rs 168 lakh crore earlier, the government retained the same advance estimate for FY19 GDP that was made in the first week of January; had it raised the GDP estimate for FY19, it would have been able to accommodate a higher fiscal deficit since the level is calculated as a proportion of GDP. Of course, it can still do this later and then show that the fiscal slippage was not as large as was earlier made out.
Read full story here: Budget mysteries: Why so many stimulus if the economy is humming
The central board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may consider the government’s request for an interim dividend in the customary post-Budget meeting with the finance minister, scheduled for February 9, sources told FE. The Budget has factored in a Rs 68,000-crore dividend from the RBI in the revised estimate for the current fiscal, economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg told Rson Saturday. Since the government has already received Rs40,000 crore from the RBI this fiscal, the interim dividend is expected to be around Rs 28,000 crore.
Also read: RBI board likely to take up interim dividend request in Feb 9 board meeting
Caught between the twin goals of treading the fiscal consolidation path and keeping its various welfare programmes adequately financed, the Centre has scaled up the funding of these non-revenue-generating schemes through extra-budgetary resources (EBRs), all off-budget borrowings raised by its surrogates. EBRs of this variety jumped from Rs77,350 crore in FY17 to a massive Rs2.24 lakh crore in FY18 and, as per the Interim Budget presented on February 1, to Rs2.74 lakh crore in FY19.
Also read: Loaned glory: Sharp rise in extra budgetary borrowings by PSUs raise the spectre of a debt trap