Indian shares slip

Indian shares fell nearly 1 percent to a three-week closing low on Wednesday, with banks leading the decline as investors braced for a likely interest rate hike at the central bank's policy review on Thursday.
Weak world equities also weighed on sentiment. Shares fell in five of the past six sessions, and are expected to continue the downtrend in the near term on lack of positive triggers.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to raise interest rate by a total of 75 basis points (bps) for the rest of 2011, including a 25 bps increase on Thursday, unchanged from forecasts in a May 3 poll, a Reuters poll found on Tuesday.
The banking sector index declined 1.6 percent. The 30-share BSE index declined 0.96 percent or 176.42 points to 18,132.24, its lowest close since May 26, with 25 of its components losing ground.
The 50-share NSE index slipped nearly 1 percent to 5,447.50 points. Foreign funds have sold a total of $161 million of local shares over Friday and Monday, after buying a total of around $80 million of shares in the three sessions to last Thursday.
Volumes continued to decline, with the average five-day daily volume at 476 million shares, 30-day average daily volume at 515 million shares, and 90-day average daily volume of 606 million shares. Top lender State Bank of India declined 2.1 percent while leading private lenders ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank erased 2.3 percent and 0.4 percent respectively. Mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp erased intra-day gains and closed barely changed, shrugging off news of it paying 3.5 billion rupees in advance tax, up from 3.2 billion rupees a year ago.
Worries over another bout of global economic slowdown pulled down outsourcing firms. Top software firm Tata Consultancy Services dropped 0.6 percent, while smaller rivals Infosys Technologies and Wipro fell 1.3 percent and 2.9 percent respectively. Around 526 million shares were dealt on the NSE where losers were almost double the number of gainers.