Mumbai: Interest rate-sensitive bank, auto and realty stocks were trading mixed after RBI today kept interest rates unchanged. Among banking stocks, PNB was quoting higher 1.74 per cent, Bank of Baroda 1.44 per cent, SBI 1.17 per cent and Yes Bank 0.79 per cent. ICICI Bank was trading flat with 0.03 per cent gains on BSE. On the other hand, HDFC Bank lost 0.25 per cent and Federal Bank 0.22 per cent. The BSE banking index was trading flat at 21,741.31, up 0.14 per cent.
In the auto space, Tata Motors fell 1.42 per cent and Bajaj Auto 0.10 per cent, while Maruti Suzuki India was trading with a mild gain of 0.08 per cent. The BSE auto index was quoting 0.38 per cent up at 19,307.19. “The policy was at par with D-Street’s expectations as a pause was expected in policy moves. RBI would likely wait for inflationary pressures to subside,” said Rohit Gadia, Founder & CEO, CapitalVia Global Research.
Among realty scrips, DLF shed 2.03 per cent, followed by Unitech, Housing Development and Infrastructure, Sobha and Godrej Properties. In contrast, Indiabulls Real Estate was quoting 4.05 per cent higher and D B Realty was up 0.15 per cent too. The BSE realty index was trading 0.43 per cent down at 1,385.65. In the broader market, the BSE Sensex was trading 280.81 points lower at 27,906.25. Rebuffing pressure from the government to reduce cost of borrowing, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan today kept interest rates unchanged, citing a spike in food prices and banks passing on to consumers only less than half of its previous rate cuts.
Rajan, in his third bi-monthly policy of the fiscal, left benchmark lending (repo) rate unchanged at 7.25 per cent as also the cash reserve ratio (CRR) at 4 per cent. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already reduced the policy rate by a total of 75 basis points, or 0.75 per cent, since January, when it embarked on an easing cycle.
