Sensex soars 96 points

MUMBAI, SEPT. 28. Consistent and hectic buying in the heavyweight counters Reliance Industries and Hindustan Lever prompted a fresh stocks rally helping the Sensex to soar by over 96 points at close on the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index opened better at 2727.34 and later rallied smartly during the session to breach the 2800-level and closed at 2811.60 against yesterday's close of 2715.50, a net rise of 96.10 points or 3.54 per cent. The broad-based BSE-100 index spurted by 41.43 points to 1312.50 from 1271.07.

Reliance Industries, which has high weightage in the BSE barometer, remained in the limelight throughout scoring impressive gains on continuous interested buying as well as fresh purchases by domestic mutual funds.

HLL and several other old economy counters such as ACC, L&T, Grasim, MTNL and SBI were also in keen demand and in turn, contributed to the Sensex's upward march.

The reported move by the Government to dilute the stake of Maruti Udyog with the Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment (CCD) renouncing Government's share to Suzuki Motors and complete the sale of 13 public sector enterprises (PSEs) in the current fiscal has injected confidence among players on Government's commitement towards reforms.

Sentiment was also enlivened following indication that the Union Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, might consider a series of measures including overall duty drawback relaxations, a destination-specific export package and further simplification of buy-back norms to revive the economy and support exports.

Foreign institutional investors were reportedly buyers but their purchases were restricted to select key stocks, market sources said, adding ``they sold off shares of top heavyweight Infosys Technologies".

In the specified group, 128 including 24 index-based stocks registered sharp to moderate gains while 41 others, mostly second-line stocks, finished with losses.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted up at 288.68 and 100.42 against 280.06 and 97.36 respectively. The BSE-500 shot up by 24.75 points to 850.56 from 825.81 and the Dollex-30 was up by 16.78 points to 482.31 from 465.53.

The volume of business remained low at Rs. 1,182.37 crores. RIL were the top traded scrip with a turnover of Rs. 168.73 crores followed by Wipro (Rs. 119.57 crores), Infosys (Rs. 103.59 crores), Satyam Computers (Rs. 81.06 crores) and Digital Equipment (Rs. 75.39 crores).

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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