Indian equity markets traded in the positive during the previous two hours of trade. Sectoral indices are mostly trading in the green led by realty and capital goods stocks.
The BSE-Sensex is trading higher by 40 points and NSE-Nifty is trading up by 10 points. BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap indices are trading flat at the moment. The rupee is trading at 53.79 to the US dollar.
Mining stocks are trading strong led by Manganese Ore India Limited (MOIL) and Coal India Limited (CIL). According to a leading daily, the second deadline of signing contracts with CIL ended last week. However, so far only 48 companies have signed fuel supply agreements (FSA) with CIL. In December, the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister, Pulok Chatterjee had been informed that 33 companies had yet not signed the agreement even though the unilateral termination clause of the model FSA has been suitably amended to ensure level playing field for private and public sector companies. We may recollect that earlier the government had issued a Presidential Directive to CIL to sign FSAs with power companies to the extent of at least 80% of the committed coal delivery.
Most of the telecom stocks are trading in green. Tata Teleservices and Bharti Airtel are among the top gainers. As per the financial daily, Bharti Airtel, and Idea Cellular, the big players in the telecom sector, have announced a price hike for voice call services. Both companies have increased their call tariff by approx 100%. Bharti Airtel has doubled the call rates from Re 1 per minute to Rs 2 per minute. On the other hand Idea has increased the calling rate from 1.2 paise per second to 2 paise per second. The two companies have been talking of the need for a price hike for quite some time now. Given the cost dynamics in the industry, the tariff hike was considered as inevitable by them. But given the competitive scenario, companies in the sector were reluctant to hike tariffs as such. Both companies now plan to raise the tariffs across all the 22 telecom circles in the country. Earlier this month Airtel had increased prices on its 2G data plans by approx. 25%.
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