Nifty ends a tad below 5000; oil & gas, metals, IT, auto up

The Nifty almost recovered Thursday's losses led by buying interest in oil & gas, technology, metal, FMCG, select auto and power stocks. It faced lot of resistance at an important psychological 5,000 mark and closed just below the same level. Oil Ministry's approval to hike in regulated gas price; more clarity on divestment programme and CMIE's report on GDP forecast helped the markets to rebound in today's trade.

Oil & gas stocks witnessed buying interest post Oil Ministry approved proposal to hike regulated gas price. ONGC shot up over 3% as it sees proposed gas price hike as a positive move and R S Sharma, Chairman of ONGC said gas price hike would add Rs 2,000 crore to revenues. Oil Ministry proposes 31% hike in regulated gas price and gas price may be hiked retrospectively from April 1. Among the others, Reliance Industries went up nearly 0.8% while BPCL and HPCL gained 1.2-1.6%.

Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has increased India's FY10 GDP (gross domestic product) growth forecast to 6.2% from 6% and upped India's FY10 Industrial Growth forecast to 7.2% from 5.8%.

Some more clarity on the government's divestment programme also supported the markets. Divestment Secretary Sunil Mitra said government would divest 5% stake in India's largest power generator NTPC (up just 0.35%). He also said 50 unlisted and 10 listed PSUs candidates were for divestment. NTPC, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam and REC (was down 1%) stake sells would go through in FY10, he added.

Disinvestment Secretary also said they were in talks with Steel Ministry for divestment in SAIL (gained 3.3%), Coal Ministry for divestment in Coal India and DoT for divestment in BSNL. According to agencies, Finance Ministry official said in talks with Mining Ministry for NMDC stake sale.

The 30-share BSE Sensex gained 152.80 points or 0.92%, to settle at 16,848.83 and the 50-share NSE Nifty closed at 4,998.95, up 0.93% or 46.30 points.