Sensex and Nifty fall almost 1% due to weak global trends | Business News

In the Sensex basket, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, Tata Steel, Power Grid, NTPC, Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance and Asian Paints were the biggest laggards.

Tata Consultancy Services rose nearly 1 per cent after the IT services major on Friday reported a 9 per cent growth in net profit to Rs 12,434 crore in the January-March quarter of fiscal 2024, driven by strong domestic business even as the company in had problems in its key markets abroad.

Nestle and HCL Technologies were the other winners.

In Asian markets, Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong were trading lower while Shanghai was trading in positive territory.

Wall Street closed significantly in the red on Friday.

Global oil benchmark Brent fell 0.17 percent to $90.30 a barrel.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) offloaded shares worth Rs 8,027 crore on Friday, according to exchange data.

“There are many headwinds that will weigh on markets today: renewed conflict in the Middle East, proposed changes in the India-Mauritius tax treaty and higher-than-expected inflation in the US are negative,” said VK Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist. Geojit Financial Services.

But those negatives were partly priced in as retaliation from Iran was expected and higher U.S. inflation was priced in by the market on Friday, he added.

The Income Tax Ministry on Friday said that the India-Mauritius Amended Protocol on Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) is yet to be ratified and notified by the department.

India and Mauritius signed an amendment to the DTAA on March 7, 2024, incorporating a principal purpose test (PPT) into the treaty that aims to curb tax avoidance by ensuring that treaty benefits are provided only for transactions with a bona fide purpose.

The BSE benchmark fell 793.25 points or 1.06 percent to settle at 74,244.90 on Friday. The NSE Nifty fell 234.40 points or 1.03 percent to 22,519.40.

Retail inflation fell to a five-month low of 4.85 percent in March, largely due to falling food prices, slowly moving towards the Reserve Bank's target of 4 percent, according to official data released on Friday.

India's industrial production growth accelerated to a four-month high of 5.7 percent in February 2024, mainly due to the good performance of the mining sector, official data released on Friday showed.