Sensex ends flat; global cues positive but CAG sours mood

Indian equity benchmarks closed flat on Friday after erasing gains in the second half of trade. The 30-share BSE Sensex gained as much as 144 points in an intraday trade due to stability in global markets on hopes of easing Eurozone credit crisis after German Chancellor Angela Merkel's support to ECB President Mario Draghi's announcements in last ECB meet.

But the three CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) reports tabled in parliament in afternoon trade washed out gains of the market. The index rose just 33.87 points to close at 17,691.08. Meanwhile, the 50-share NSE Nifty failed to hit the 5400 mark as it has touched an intraday high of 5399.95, which went up 3.35 points to close at 5,366.30.

The rise in FMCG, technology, auto stocks and ICICI Bank counter balanced the fall in metals, power, capital goods stocks and HDFC Bank.

Three CAG reports focus on the alleged losses to the government because of violation of norms in allocation of coal blocks, the concession agreement and land given to DIAL, and award of UMPP to companies like Reliance Power and Tata Power.

The CAG report states that allocation of coal blocks during the period from 2004 to 2009 was a bigger scam than 2G, and has pegged presumptive losses to the government on these allocations at Rs 1.86 lakh crore for 17.40 billion tonne of coal. The CAG said 25 firms including Essar Power, Hindalco, Reliance Power, Tata Steel, Tata Power and JSPL were benefited from these coal blocks.

Reliance Power is said to have gained Rs 29,003 crore as the bidding process is said to be vitiated by allowing Reliance Power to use excess coal from three blocks allocated to Sasan project. The stock was down 5.6% while Tata Power tanked 3.7%.

Hindalco Industries declined 2.5% and Jindal Steel plunged 4%. Tata Steel and Sterlite Industries were down over 0.8%.

CAG has questioned role of the then Civil Aviation minister, Praful Patel for favouring GMR and has said in its report that the company received undue benefits of Rs 3,400 crore. GMR Infrastructure declined 3%.

For the week, the NSE Nifty gained 0.86% while the BSE Sensex rose 0.76%. These benchmarks rallied more than 6% since July 27 and in those 15 days, foreign institutional investors have bought more than Rs 7,000 crore worth of equity shares in India.

FMCG majors ITC and HUL were up around 1.5%. Software services exporters TCS, Infosys and Wipro moved up 1-1.6%.

Top commercial vehicle maker Tata Motors rallied 2% after its global sales increased 21% YoY to 101,605 units in July.

Private sector lender ICICI Bank rose 0.5% while its rival HDFC Bank declined 0.9%.

Engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro tanked 1.5% and state-owned power equipment manufacturer BHEL was down 0.5%.

State-owned ONGC, NTPC and GAIL slipped 0.7%-1.7%.

Decliners outnumbered advancers by 797 to 654 on the National Stock Exchange.

On the global front, France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were marginally higher. Asian markets like Hang Seng and Nikkei gained 0.77% each. Shanghai closed flat.