Indian stock markets continued to trade in the red during last two hours of trade. Barring energy sector, all the sectoral indices were in the negative, led by capital goods and metal stocks.
The BSE-Sensex is trading down by 145 points and NSE-Nifty is trading down by 50 points. However, BSE Mid cap and BSE Small cap indices are trading down by 0.6% and 0.3% respectively. The rupee is trading at 52.81 to the US dollar.
Power stocks have been trading in the red led by Tata Power and Reliance Infra. As per a leading financial daily, the government recently issued directive allowing industrial consumers to buy electricity directly from power generation and power trading companies. As per the law ministry, regulators cannot fix charges for industrial consumers that consume above 1-MW power. This move is likely to provide competitive power rates to industrial consumers but it will reduce the revenues of the power distribution companies. As per Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company, 30% of their revenues comes from industrial consumers using more than 1 MW and losing this customer base will adversely impact the cross-subsidies being offered to poor and agricultural consumers.
As per a leading financial daily, Coal India is likely to fall short of the target of 440 million tonne (mt) of production this fiscal. Infact, with just 292 mt of production (66% of the target) achieved in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the company is already lagging on a year on year (YoY) basis by 9 mt. For the month of December, the company posted a production of 43 mt in December 2011, up by 2 mt (YoY). Given the current situation, it will be facing tough challenge to match the production even to last year's level (431 mt). For last year's levels to be met, the company will need to come up with positive surprise of exceeding the monthly production for the coming months by around 8 mt to 10 mt, something which it did in March 2011. The stock was trading in the red.
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