India tops gainers in Asia

Tue, 28 Feb Closing

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Backed by buying interest in engineering, commodity and power stocks, indices in Indian stock markets ended the session close to the day's highs. After a muted start, investor interest gradually intensified across index heavyweights. There were no signs of profit booking in the final trading hour as well and the indices closed well above the dotted line. While the BSE-Sensex closed higher by around 285 points (up 1.6%), the NSE-Nifty closed higher by around 94 points (up 1.8%). The BSE Mid cap and the BSE Small cap indices gained around 3% each. Barring FMCG and IT sectors, stocks across the board evinced investor interest in today's session.

As regards global markets, Asian indices closed in the positive today while most European indices have opened higher. The rupee was trading at Rs 49.07 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Capital goods major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is mulling to expand its overseas component to 25-30% of its order book by 2014 in order to neutralize over the difficult conditions in the Indian infrastructure sector. At present, overseas orders account for 17% of L&T's order book of Rs 1.4 trillion.Further, the company has started looking at CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) foray. The engineering and construction giant, has gradually been increasing its exposure in the international market and securing orders. From having no presence overseas less than a decade ago, global orders accounted for 7% of L&T's order book in 2004, which have moved up to 17% in 2011.

Meanwhile, the country's largest private power producer, Tata Power, is actively scouting for overseas opportunities for generation and distribution projects in SAARC nations, Africa, Turkey and West Asia. In these geographies the company would look for power generation and distribution projects as well as resources. The firm is planning to focus on thermal, wind and solar areas. Faced with multiple domestic sectoral headwinds, the company's is looking overseas for growth opportunities.

Among overseas ventures, it has stakes in two Indonesian coal mines and it along with Norway's SN Power is developing an 880 MW hydro project in Nepal. The company has an installed capacity of over 3,790 MW and expects to have a capacity of 25,000 MW by 2017. Currently, Tata Power is executing thermal and renewable projects having total capacity of about 5,351 MW.