The rupee continued its advance and was quoted at 40.83 against the US dollar in late morning deals supported by weak dollar overseas and sustained dollar selling by exporters, despite capital outflows.

The finance ministry announced today that the government is not intending to raise rates on small savings scheme. Prevailing interest rates on small savings are within the range of 3.5% for the post office saving account and 8% under the post office monthly income account. Rates for Public Provident Fund and Senior Citizen savings scheme are 8% and 9% respectively.

The unavailability of spectrum has affected the telecom industry so sharply that the Department of Telecom is about to limit the number of operators in each service area to maintain a minimum quality of service. There are 23 telecom circles in the country.

Trading highlights

Indiabulls Real Estate was the most-active stock with a turnover of Rs 131.20 crore followed by SBI and Reliance Natural.

Advancers

BHEL led the gainers, surging 2.5% to Rs 2,519. BHEL intends to enhance its manufacturing capacity to 15,000 MW per annum with total investment of around Rs 3,200 crore during the Eleventh Plan, spread over the period 2007-2012.

Banking and financial stocks also rallied on fresh buying interest and on market talk that CRR, or cash reserve ratio, may be cut down by 50 basis points shortly. ICICI Bank rallied 2% to Rs 887. SBI advanced 1.7% to Rs 1,227, and HDFC Bank added 1.4% to Rs 1,010.

Other stocks which advanced included Hero Honda, up 1.4%, at Rs 700. Bharti Airtel, Dr.Reddy and ACC advanced around 1% each at Rs 833, Rs 657 and Rs 875, respectively.

Decliners

IT large-caps led the decliners on a stronger rupee against the dollar as any advance in the rupee directly influences revenue and profit of IT companies. Satyam shed 2% at Rs 452. Wipro dropped 1.8% to Rs 534. Infosys slipped 1.5% to Rs 1,973, and TCS was down 1% at Rs 1,237.

ONGC declined 1.8% to Rs 890. Index heavy Reliance Industries slipped 1.4% to Rs 1,598. Reliance was off from a high of Rs 1623.25 tracking reports that it has got a tax benefit of Rs 376.17 crore in 2002-03 because of unreasonable concessions due to under-assessment by tax authorities.

The other major decliners were Reliance Communications dropping 1.4% to Rs 475 and Bajaj Auto losing 1.2% at Rs 2,635.


6:30AM European markets inch lower Tuesday in subdued trading.

National benchmarks declined in 10 of 18 markets in western Europe. The U.K. FTSE 100 index rose 0.1% at 6,562.50 and the German DAX Xetra 30 index inched up less than 0.1% to 7,461.36. The French CAC-40 index slipped 0.2% at 6,015.82.

Advancers

Nokia led the gainers, up 3.9% on Monday, firming up as the world top mobile handsetmaker, after the groupannounced it was winning greater market share. Nokia envisages having more than 36% of the global cellphone market in the second quarter, benefiting from strong growth in emerging markets.

DaimlerChrysler gained 1.8% after the German carmaker sold 80.1% of its loss-making Chrysler unit for $7.4 billion to Cerberus, the private equity group. DaimlerChrysler strength lifted Renault, up 2.5%.

More talk about consolidation in the Italian banking sector pushed Capitalia up 1.4% on talks of an imminent bid from rival UniCredit, 0.9% higher.