Mumbai: As the Indian economy is all set to take off and foreign investors putting confidence in ‘Make in India’ campaign with increased inflow of capital, the markets reflected the sentiments on early Wednesday.
India’s reputation as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies held true as it recorded a 8.9% rise in GDP in the three months that ended Sept 30. India’s economy is growing at a faster pace at a time when western countries are still struggling to emerge from the global economic downturn.
The BSE Sensex, in early trade, breached the 28,000-mark for the first time, while NSE Nifty hit a new peak of 8,363.65.
The Sensex and the Nifty were trading higher by nearly 0.3% on persistent inflow of foreign funds and sustained buying by retail investors, buoyed by a series of economic reforms undertaken by the government and better-than-expected earnings by blue-chip companies.
Barring metal and oil & gas, all other BSE sectoral indices were trading significantly in the green. Among them, banking index gained the most by 1.41%, followed by realty 1.03%, healthcare 0.78% and consumer durables 0.53%. Only metal index was down 1.72% and oil & gas 0.12%.
SBIN, Axis Bank, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Auto and ICICI Bank were the top five gainers among 30-share Sensex constituents, while the top five losers were SSLT, Coal India, M&M, Bharti Airtel and Hindalco.
With the political change in May 2014 and the bottoming out of India’s economic slowdown in 2013-14, the World Bank has indicated that India will grow 5.6% this year. Coupled with lower oil prices and gradual implementation of economic reforms back home, the market signals are largely in positive territory.
Analysts at Dalal Street see further upside in the index up to the levels of 30,000 by the December-end and over 35,000 in the next one year given the fact that macros have stabalised and growth has bottomed out.
Deutsche Bank has raised the Sensex target for March 2015 to 29,000 citing intensifying policy action.
Among other Asian markets, Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.21%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.62% in early trade on Wednesday. The US Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.10% higher on Tuesday’s trade.