Market remain firm on broad based buying

The Indian equity markets are not looking to give up and have continued their relentless bull run for yet another day, taking the benchmarks comfortably higher over the psychological level of 18600 (Sensex) and 5580 (Nifty). The broad based buying has firmed up in the mid morning session led by the surge in power and metal sector, none of the sectors are showing any sign of fatigue even after surging in last few session. The oil & gas sector that took a breather in last session too has made a mild bounce back supported by an upmove in the heavy weight Reliance Industries. IT sector has surged on a report stating that the Indian enterprise software market showed broad growth and recovery in 2010, with total software revenue increasing 16.3 per cent to total $2.5 billion.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18,625.31, up by 132.86 points or 0.72%. The index has touched a high and low of 18,654.72 and 18,552.19 respectively. There were 27 stocks advancing against just 3 declines on the index.

The broader indices too are in the jubilant mood; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were up by 0.78% and 1.01% respectively. The market breadth strong with 68.97% stocks advancing against 26.64% declines.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Power up by 1.37%, Metal up by 1.26%, FMCG up by 0.87%, IT was up by 0.81% and TECk was up by 0.72%, while there was no loser.

The top gainer on the Sensex were BHEL up by 2.80%, Reliance Infra up by 2.38%, Sterlite Inds up by 2.25%, Tata Power up by 1.73% and TCS was up by 1.57%.

The losers on the Sensex were Bajaj Auto down by 0.69%, L&T down by 0.50% and ONGC was down by 0.39%.

The special economic zone meant for creating export hubs are in danger because of changes in the tax laws, the commerce ministry has decided to appeal its case before the parliamentary standing committee looking into the Direct Tax Code Bill (DTC) in the monsoon session which is about to start in a month. The direct taxes code bill is with parliament's standing committee on finance.

As per the exporters' organization, 15 approved special economic zones are considering dropping their projects after the budget for 2011-12 imposed Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) and Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) on such zones.

The commerce department official said that they will make a case against the imposition of MAT and DDT this fiscal as SEZs have been promised tax-free operations in the initial years by the SEZ Act, adding further the official said, it is now becoming clear that it would not be viable for a number of investors to continue if faced with this unexpected financial burden.

The Special Economic Zone Act gives five years of tax holidays on profits to developers and units. The DTC bill introduced by finance ministry has recommended finishing all the tax holidays through imposition of MAT and also linking tax breakers to investment instead of profits.  Although, before the DTC bill be approved the finance ministry in this year's budget, imposed an 18% MAT and 15% DDT on SEZs. By imposing MAT and DDT, finance ministry wants to recover the losses from tax concession given to SEZs, projected at Rs 1, 75,487 crore in the 2004-05 to 2009-10. 

In against to the imposed tax by finance ministry, the industry has argued that the units operating in SEZs are not entitled for export promotion schemes and have to pay full custom duty on what they sell in the domestic market, hence it would not make commercial sense for them to operate in SEZs without tax exemptions.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,583.30, up by 38.00 points or 0.69%. The index has touched a high and low of 5,591.80 and 5,566.50 respectively. There were 41 stocks advancing against 8 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were BHEL up by 2.68%, Reliance Infra up by 2.61%, Sterlite Inds up by 2.37%, IDFC up by 1.86% and Ranbaxy was up by 1.61%.

On the other hand, Cairn India down by 0.99%, L&T down by 0.495, HCL technology down by 0.48%, ONGC down by 0.32% and RPower down by 0.30% were the top losers.

All the Asian equity indices barring Shanghai Composite which was down by 0.59%, were trading in the green; Hang Seng was up 0.32%, KLSE Composite was up 0.18%, Nikkei 225 was up by 1.18%, Straits Times was up 0.53%, Seoul Composite gained 1.34% and Taiwan Weighted was higher by 1.10% 

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