The Indian rupee strengthened gaining as much as 23 paise against the US dollar in the early morning trades on Thursday. The domestic currency had been appreciating since last two days following the record-run in Indian equities led by IMF economy forecast. The rupee surged 23 paise to 63.46 apiece US dollar at the interbank foreign exchange market on Thursday. The Reserve Bank of India fixed the reference rate of the rupee at 63.6439 against the US dollar on Wednesday. Earlier yesterday, the rupee finished 9 paise higher at 63.69 per US dollar after jumping 14 paise in the early trades.
In a major development on Wednesday, Finance Secretary Rajiv Kumar laid down 6-point reforms for the PSBs and said their performance will be under the annual assessment. Of the 21 PSBs, IDBI Bank emerged as the biggest beneficiary as the bank was allocated a whopping Rs 10,610 crore followed by Bank of India (Rs 9,232 crore), SBI (Rs 8,800 crore), UCO Bank (Rs 6,507 crore) and Central Bank of India (Rs 5,158 crore) from the government.
Meanwhile, Indian stock markets hovered in red ahead of F&O expiry and Q3 earnings of Maruti Suzuki after opening marginally higher with Sensex and Nifty starting at fresh highs in the morning trade on Thursday. BSE Sensex started the day at 36,208.39 up by 46.75 points while NSE Nifty began at a record high of 11,095.6, up by 9.6 points. Shares of blue-chip companies such as Dr Reddy’s Lab, Maruti Suzuki and UPL will be in close watch ahead of their respective Q3 earnings. Shares of L&T, ICICI Bank, Sun Pharma, NTPC, Tata Motors, Axis Bank emerged as the top gainers on Sensex today. Among the sectoral indices of NSE, seven out of 11 were trading in green with Nifty Metal and Nifty Pharma leading the charge while Nifty PSU Bank and Nifty IT index shed 0.5-2.5%.
Shares of the state-run UCO Bank surged over 6% to Rs 33.55 while the stock of Biocon slipped nearly 5% after the drugmaker reported a drop of 46% in the net profit to Rs 92 crore. Other major companies which are also lined up with their respective third-quarter results are Ajanta Pharma, LIC Housing Finance, Future Supply Chain Solutions, Jindal Steel & Power, Nilkamal, Shriram City Union Finance, Tata Coffee, L&T Finance Holdings, and Avenue Supermarts.
