Mumbai: Indian equity benchmarks remained under selling pressure since early trade due to profit booking, global economic growth concerns and warning of downgrade by the Standard & Poor's. European markets were marginally down in early trade. The 30-share BSE Sensex fell -162.26 points to end at 18,631.10 and the 50-share NSE Nifty lost 52.45 points to 5,652.15. The broader markets fell almost one per cent as three shares declined for every share advancing on the National Stock Exchange.
Rating agency S&P said there is a significant chance of cutting India's credit rating in the future. "There is 1 in 3 likelihood of India downgrade in the next 24 months," S&P's Kimeng Tan told CNBC-TV18. S&P roiled domestic markets in April when it cut India's sovereign outlook to "negative", putting at risk the country's current rating of "BBB-", the lowest investment-grade rating by the agency. India is the only Asia Pacific (APAC) nation to see negative outlook for the Eurozone instability, S&P pointed out.
This comes even though the government had raised the price of heavily subsidised diesel last month to rein in its fiscal deficit and fight the threat of becoming the first of the big emerging economies to be downgraded to junk. Private oil & gas producer Reliance Industries, two-wheeler major Hero Motocorp, steel manufacturer Tata Steel and drug producer Sun Pharma outperformed with marginal gains.
Country's largest lender State Bank of India fell 2 per cent while its rivals ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were down 1 per cent each. State-owned GAIL, NTPC and ONGC tanked over 1.5 per cent. Engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro and software services exporter Infosys slipped 1 per cent too. Power stocks like NTPC and Tata Power slipped 1.4-1.6 per cent while power equipment maker BHEL was down 2 per cent.
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