Market Up

BSE 30-share Sensex was up 383.99 points or 2.69%. Finance
Secretary Ashok Chawla's comments that the government's record
market borrowing programme would not pressure bond yields and
interest rates further bolstered bulls. Revival of the annual
monsoon this month also underpinned sentiment.

Auto, IT, power, FMCG, healthcare stocks rose. But Index
heavyweight Reliance Industries pared gains. India's largest IT
firm by sales TCS rose ahead of Q1 June 2009 result. The market
breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was strong.
All the sectoral indices on BSE were in green.

India's monsoon has revived this month after a dismal start last
month. Rainfall in the week to 10 July was 6% more than the
long-term average. For the 1 June-15 July period it was 27% below
normal, improving from a deficit of 36% up to 8 July.

The weather office has also forecast widespread rainfall in the
next five days in most regions of India where more than two-thirds
of the people live in villages and 60% of the farm land depends on
the annual rains. The weak start to the vital June-September
monsoon rains had stoked fears of crop failure, encouraging the
government to ban wheat exports and prepare contingency plans.
While the monsoon rains have picked up, progress has been uneven,
causing floods in some areas and drought in some districts which
are not major crop producers.