By Manvi Pant and Bharath Rajeswaran
BENGALURU (Reuters) -Indian shares closed marginally lower on Monday, dragged by Reliance Industries and Wipro after the companies posted weaker-than-expected quarterly results, with volatility rising a day ahead of the budget.
The NSE Nifty 50 fell 0.09% to 24,509.25, while the S&P BSE Sensex shed 0.13% to 80,502.08.
The volatility index spiked to a six-week high of 15.63 during the session before settling at 15.44.
Investors waited ahead of the union budget on Tuesday, amid concerns over possible tweaks in capital gains tax, according to analysts.
If the long-term capital tax on equities were to be raised, the rationale for these changes may be to create an even playing field between asset classes, Neelkanth Mishra, chief economist at Axis Bank said.
In India, gains on listed shares are taxed at 10% if stocks are held for 12 months, and at 15% if held for less than 12 months. But other asset classes such as debt have higher long-term capital gains tax of 20%.
India’s government took a more cautious stance on outlook for growth this fiscal year, predicting the world’s fifth-largest economy will expand between 6.5% and 7%, in its annual Economic Survey, lower than the Reserve Bank of India’s growth forecast of 7.2%.
Meanwhile, shares of Reliance dropped 3.5% after the oil-to-telecom conglomerate reported on Friday first-quarter profit below analysts’ estimates.
Wipro, which missed quarterly revenue estimates, lost 9.2%.
HDFC Bank, the country’s top private lender, rose about 2.2% after beating quarterly profit forecasts on Saturday as loan-loss provisions fell. A rise in HDFC Bank capped losses in benchmark indexes.
State-owned companies gained about 2% a day ahead of budget. The more domestically focussed small- and mid-caps gained about 1% and 1.3%, respectively.
(Reporting by Manvi Pant and Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza, Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
