Modi Govt Approves Policy To 'Buy Indian' To Boost 'Make-In-India’

With a view to encourage Make-In-India-programme and giving preference to locally made goods and services, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has cleared the govt’s own version of the U.S’s Buy American policy via a national government procurement policy.

The new policy captioned “Govt procurement preference to Make-In-India order, 2017”, cleared by the Union cabinet on 24 May 2017, is expected to give a considerable impetus to local manufacturing and services sectors, whereby creating employments. It will also encourage the capital & technology flow into domestic manufacturing and services. It also provides push towards manufacture of parts, components and sub-components of these items, in line with the ‘Make in India’ vision.

The national procurement policy entails purchases of at least Rs. 2.00 trillion a year and also covers government companies, autonomous bodies and entities under the control of government. The government has defined local Goods & Service as those where at least 50 percent of the value addition has been done in India.

Small purchases of less than Rs. 5,00,000 are exempted from the policy; procurement of goods & services worth Rs. 50.00 lakh or less, where the nodal ministry decides that there is adequate local capacity and local competition, can be made only from local suppliers.

For procurement of orders worth more than Rs. 50.00 lakh, or where there is inadequate local capacity or competition, local suppliers will get a 20 percent margin of purchase preference. It implies that the local supplier will be given a chance to match the lowest bid, if its own bid is not more than 20 percent higher.

A standing committee in the Deptt of Industrial Policy & Promotion will manage the implementation of this order and its impending issues, and make recommendation to nodal ministries and procuring companies.

Sensex, Nifty shed gains to close lower on tepid sentiment; Metal shares fall

The key indices  Sensex and Nifty ended the session on a negative terrain in a volatile trade, dragged by fall in midcaps amid rising concern over cross border tensions. The BSE Sensex  went down 63.61 pts at 30,301.64, while the NSE Nifty-50 index ended 16.40 pts lower at 9,369.75. Sentiment was dampened by growing Indo-Pak tensions. Moody's down-grading of credit rating on China hurt the risk appetite.
Metal shares fall after Moody's downgraded debt rating of China. Steel Authority of India falls 4.37%, Bhushan Steel dipped 3.99%, Hindustan Zinc tanked 3.7%, Hindustan Copper fell 3.2%, NMDC sunk 3.06%, Vedanta went down 3.01% among many other metal majors.
The market breadth was negative with 697 advancing shares against a decline of 2,022 shares, and there were 151 shares unchanged.
Tata Motors was the star performer today, along with Tata Motors DVR and GAIL India  on both indices, while, BHEL, L&T, Bank of Baroda and Bharti Infratel were losing sheen.

Sensex, Nifty slide in broader market sell off, pharma stocks fall

The benchmark indices ended lower  with  BSE Sensex going down 205.72 points at 30,365.25, and the NSE Nifty down 51.01 points at 9,386.15 since investors booked profit in latest outperformers.
The BSE Mid-Cap index fell 1.56 and the BSE Small-Cap index fell 1.89%. The falls in both these indices were higher than the Sensex's fall in percentage terms. However, the broad market showed weakness. On BSE. 2,123 shares declined and 597 shares advanced and 158 shares were unchanged.
Shares of public sector banks declined. Bank of India tumbles 7.32%, United Bank of India falls 5.47%, Central Bank of India dips 5.01%, Vijaya Bank  went down 5.01% among many others. Corporation Bank declined 4.87% triggered by the bank reporting higher bad loans in fourth quarter.
Pharma stocks were the biggest laggards and the Nifty Pharma Index was on track to announce its 6th sucessive session of loss, with Sun Pharma hitting a 6-month low after Taro Pharmaceutical reported weak Q4 results.
European stocks edged higher since investors accepted fresh economic data in the euro zone after waking up to a report of another suspected terrorist attack in the UK.