Markets on a roll: Sensex soars 189 points on reforms, earnings boost

Mumbai: Bse benchmark Sensex rose 189 points to reclaim the 30,000-level and NSE Nifty went past 9,350 in early trade today, buoyed by encouraging corporate earnings and a string of government reforms, including NPA resolution and steel policy.

The domestic equities also got a boost after the US Federal Reserve kept its policy rate unchanged in its two-day policy review.

Banking stocks led the recovery this morning following the government's decision to bring an ordinance to empower the Reserve Bank to effectively deal with the problem of mounting bad loans in the banking sector, brokers said.

A proposal to amend Section 35 A of the Banking Regulation Act through the ordinance route was approved by the Cabinet yesterday. The 30-share index was trading up 189.14 points, or 0.63 per cent, at 30,083.94, with all the sectoral indices led by banking and consumer durables staying in the green.

The gauge had shed 26.38 points in the previous session. The NSE Nifty-50 index was trading higher by 49.45 points, or 0.53 per cent, at 9,361.40.

In the banking segment, shares of country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank climbed 6.84 per cent to quote at Rs 291.40 after it yesterday reported manifold jump in standalone net profit to Rs 2,024.64 crore for the quarter ended March 31.

Other gainers were SBI, Axis Bank, Adani Ports, Bharti Airtel, L&T and Asian Paint. The Union Cabinet yesterday also gave its approval to the National Steel Policy (NSP) 2017 that aims to achieve steel making capacity of 300 million tonnes by 2030 with an additional investment of Rs 10 lakh crore. The Cabinet also approved a policy for use of domestic steel products in government organisations.

In the Asian region, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.52 per cent while China's Shanghai Composite shed 0.07 per cent in their early deals. The US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.04 per cent higher in yesterday's trade.