Strong Start To The Week; Capital Goods & Power Stocks Rally

Indian share markets continued to trade strong in the afternoon session amid strong global markets. At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex closed higher by 195 points and the NSE Nifty finished up 71 points. The S&P BSE Mid Cap finished up by 0.7% while & S&P BSE Small Cap too finished up by 0.8%. Gains were largely seen in capital goods stocks, power stocks and bank stocks.

IndusInd Bank share price and Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd share price surged 5.1% and 3.3% after it was reported that the companies signed a confidentiality agreement for the proposed merger between them. Reportedly, Bharat Financial will be run as a subsidiary of IndusInd for a year and then it may be merged with the bank.

Asian stock markets finished broadly higher today with shares in Japan leading the region. The Nikkei 225 is up 1.41% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is up 1.04% and China’s Shanghai Composite is up 0.33%. European markets are broadly higher today with shares in France leading the region. The CAC 40 is up 1.17% while Germany’s DAX is up 1.11% and London’s FTSE 100 is up 0.68%.

The rupee was trading at Rs 63.88 against the US$ in the afternoon session. Oil prices were trading at US$ 47.84 at the time of writing.

As per a leading financial daily, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that it is a big challenge for banks to recover money from big defaulters and has blamed these big defaulters for high non-performing assets (NPAs) in the Indian banking system.

He noted that wherever small borrowers are taking loans from banks, there is smaller NPA. He also explained that NPAs are negligible in the banks where smaller amount of loans taken for agricultural and smaller businesses and even in MUDRA scheme, the NPAs are on a minuscule scale.

The Minister has stated that banks have always played an important role in promoting economic growth of a country. Therefore, he said that it is important for banks to maintain their credibility. Adding further, he said that banks offer loans for different purposes but if the banks’s capacity to offer the loans gets affected because some big defaulter, the growth, not only of rural sector, but of the entire country gets affected.