Sensex up 75 points in early trade; IDFC biggest gainer after RBI boosts infrastructure funding

The benchmark stock index Sensex is up 75 points in early trade today hovering around 25,303 points. The Nifty is up 21 points at 7547.

With the Reserve Bank of India relaxing infrastructure financing rules, IDFC has been a big gainer up 4% today. According to the Reserve Bank of India guidelines issued on Tuesday, the money raised by the banks through the long term bonds for loans to infrastructure firms, will be exempt from cash reserve ratio (CRR) and statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) requirements that other bank deposits are subject to. In addition, these long term bonds will also be exempt from meeting priority lending targets for banks.

The buggest gainers in the market are IDFC, ICICI Bank, DLF, SBI and Axis Bank. The biggest lsoers are HDFC, Sesa Sterlite, NMDC, GAIL and Jindal Steel. The metal sector has been the biggest lsoer in the early trade session.

The Indian rupee slipped in the opening trade. It has opened lower by 11 paise at 60.23 per dollar against 60.12 Tuesday.

The Asian markets have remained muted even though China's growth at 7.5% in the second quarter of the year was better than what the markets were expecting.

The US markets have also been cautious after the Fed raised concerns that the valuations of the social media and small cap companies were already too high on the bourses.