MUMBAI: Investors apprehensive about the sluggishness in the economic sector and increasing trade war on the global level, sold fiercely on Tuesday. Due to this, the Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange came down by 770 points and the Nifty also closed down by 225 points. Recently, figures of GDP, basic industries and vehicle sales have come. All these figures are indicating that the economic slowdown in the country is deepening.
The Bombay Stock Exchange ended at 7,569.81 points, a loss of 2.06 percent, at the end of 36,562.91 points after coming down by 867 points during 30-share Sensex trading. The Nifty of the National Stock Exchange lost 225.35 points, or 2.04 percent, to 10,797.90 points.
Among the Sensex companies, ICICI Bank, Tata Steel, Vedanta, HDFC, IndusInd Bank, Tata Motors, Reliance Industries and ONGC fell as much as 4.45 percent. Shares of two IT companies, TechM and HCL Tech, closed marginally lower amid a fall in the rupee.
In the inter-bank foreign exchange market, the rupee was trading at a loss of 90 paise against the dollar at 72.27 rupees per dollar. The government has announced the integration of ten public sector banks. Due to this, shares of public sector banks were also broken. Experts say that this move has sent a message among investors that the government is not only putting new capital in the banks but it also wants to improve their functioning. But even this merger of banks seems troubling given the geographical presence and cultural diversity of the banks.
Although the government has taken several steps to give a boost to the economy, the market sentiment has been affected by weak macroeconomic data and a decline of more than ten percent in sales of automobile companies in August.
The figures for GDP growth for the first quarter of the current financial year were released after the business closed in the stock market last Friday. GDP growth in the first quarter was five percent, the lowest in the last six years. The poor performance of manufacturing and agriculture sector was cited as the main reason. With this, the growth rate of eight basic sector industries came down to 2.1 percent in July. It also affected business sentiment.
