Indian share prices could hit record levels on global market gains as rate concerns ease, dealers said Friday. They said the markets showed buoyancy after India's inflation rate continued to fall, easing pressure for further interest rate hikes.
They said buying momentum picked up towards the close of the week with the benchmark 30-share Sensex moving towards record levels. Indian shares rose 183.15 or 1.26 percent to close the week at 14,650.51, just 73.37 points short of their intraday record of 14,723.88 hit on February 9.
Sentiment improved as India's inflation fell to a 14-month low of 4.03 percent for the week ending June 16 from 4.28 the previous week, dealers said. The figure was comfortably within the central bank's medium-term target of 4.0-4.5 percent.
"The markets could move to record highs early next week," said a dealer at brokerage Jamnadas Morarjee. "The absence of fresh buying triggers may, however, limit gains," he said.
Dealers said the pace of buying would pick up only when first-quarter earnings data from Indian companies are announced in July. Overseas funds have been net buyers of Indian equities this year to the tune of 4.45 billion dollars, well above the 2.66 billion dollars worth of shares that they purchased during the same period a year ago.
In 2006, the Sensex rose by a record 46.7 percent, led by foreign fund investments in Indian equities totalling 7.99 billion dollars. In 2005, the index climbed 42.3 percent on record overseas fund flows of 10.7 billion dollars.
Dealers said there was still demand for fresh share issues. India's biggest private sector lender, ICICI Bank, last week saw strong fund demand for its record 4.3 billion dollar share sale, which was oversubscribed over eleven times. The previous week, real estate firm DLF raised 2.24 billion dollars through its IPO.
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