Indian stock markets trading in the red

Thu, 1 Mar 01:30 pm

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Indian stock market indices continued to trade below the dotted line over the last two hours of trade on the back of heavy selling activity witnessed across industry heavyweights. Barring Consumer Durables and pharma stocks, all the sectors have been trading in the red led by stocks in the capital goods and realty sectors.

The BSE-Sensex is down by 192 points, while the NSE-Nifty is down by 58 points. BSE Mid cap index and the BSE Small cap index are down by 0.29% and 0.20% respectively. The rupee is trading at 49.21 to the US dollar.

As per a leading financial daily, Gujarat Gas Company Ltd (GGCL) has announced a hike of 3.6% in Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) prices. Hence, CNG will now be available at Rs 44.95 at the end customer level. This is the fifth time the company has revised prices after January 2011.The company caters to more than 1.3 lakh vehicles running in the cities of Gujarat (Surat, Bharuch and Ankleshwar). The company has cited high input and operating costs as the reason for the hike and has suggested that this won't make much difference in per kilometer running cost of the CNG based vehicles. Despite the hike, CNG is around 54% cheaper when compared to petrol driven vehicles. As per the management, the company will be investing more in setting up CNG stations in Surat and Bharuch district.

As per a leading financial daily, Coal India Ltd.(CIL) will ensure offtake commitments from power companies before importing coal to meet their raw material requirements over 70 million tonnes (MT). CIL was recently asked by the Prime Minister's office (PMO) to meet the supply commitments of the power sector even if it means resorting to imports. As per the company, a similar plan to import coal failed last year due to lack of firm commitment from power companies. Also, it expects the power companies to import on their own and has stated categorically that importing coal is not its area of expertise. The power companies are normally reluctant to such firm commitments. Until deals with global coal majors for long-term offtake materialize, Coal India may ask designated national trading agencies to import coal on its behalf in the short term. Last year, the coal imports by power companies remained flat at 21 mt. However, with around 12,000 Megawatts(MW) coal based power generation expected to commission this year, the total coal demand in 2011-12 is expected to be at 470 mt. Out of this, Coal India has promised 343 mt of supplies.