Indian share markets slip further

Fri, 15 Mar 01:30 pm

   Previous Close   

   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   11:30 am   

   Closing   

With persistent selling in index heavyweights, Indian share markets slipped deeper below the dotted line in the post-noon trading session. Majority of the sectoral indices are trading in red with realty, banking and oil and gas stocks being the biggest losers. Only consumer durables, IT and pharma stocks are trading in green.

BSE-Sensex is down 148 points and NSE-Nifty is trading down 35 points. While BSE Mid Cap is down 0.5%, BSE Small Cap index is trading down by 0.6%. The rupee is trading at 54.1 to the US dollar.

Most of the energy stocks are trading in red, with Reliance Industries and Gas Authority Of India Ltd. (GAIL) being the biggest losers. However, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL) and Castrol are trading strongly. As per a leading financial daily, Reliance Industries (RIL) has entered into an agreement with Indo Gulf Fertilizers to sell natural gas from its KG-D6 fields to the latter's Jagdishpur plant. The agreement is to sell 0.2 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd) of gas to the fertilizer company. However, supplies have not commenced as Indo Gulf Fertilizers is still negotiating an agreement for gas transport through GAIL's pipelines. Last year, the government had allocated KG-D6 gas to fertilizer companies, Indo Gulf Fertilizers and IIFCO but agreements could not be signed due to differences over sales tax liability. Reportedly out of RIL's total gas production of around 17 mmscmd, 15.2 mmscmd is being supplied to urea-making fertilizer plants and the balance to GAIL's LPG extraction units.

Most of telecom stocks are trading in red with Idea Cellular and AGC Networks being among the top losers. As per a leading financial daily, Bharti Airtel is likely to ask China's Huawei to take care of the 4G rollouts in metro cities, Delhi and Mumbai. In past, Huawei has supplied 4G networks and devices to Airtel in Bangalore and is likely to provide similar services in Delhi and Mumbai. Bharti Airtel was the first Indian telecom company to launch its fourth-generation wireless services about a year ago. Reportedly, till date, Bharti has launched 4G services only in Bangalore, Kolkata and Pune and has some 40,000-odd customers. Further, Huawei will initially supply 6,000-odd base stations (BTSs) for the first wave of Airtel's high-speed wireless data service rollouts in Delhi and Mumbai. On the current price the cost would be $25,000 per base station, the initial cost of rolling out 4G networks in both metros would be $150 million The final deal size could run in excess of $200 million if Huawei is also asked to handle these networks. Bharti Airtel stock was trading down by 2%.