Indian stocks ended at 1-month high, up over 3 percent on Friday after RBI announced another round of measures to help fight liquidity crisis amid coronavirus lockdown. The Sensex ended 986 points higher at 31,589, while the Nifty settled 274 points higher at 9,267.

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The Reserve Bank of India cut its reverse repo rate by 25 basis points (bps) in a bid to push banks to deploy excess funds toward lending, just two weeks after it cut the rates by 90 bps.

Indian banks have been extremely wary of lending over the last few quarters as the economy has cooled and those fears have only increased in recent weeks as business activity collapses.

The RBI also announced another round of targetted long-term repo operations and other regulatory measures for banks. The Ways and Means Advances (WMA) limit for state governments has also been increased by 60 percent with immediate effect, valid upto September 30, 2020

Banks and financial stocks surged post the RBI announcements. The Nifty Bank index surged 7 percent, while the Nifty Fin Services index was up 5.7 percent.

Among other sectors, Nifty Auto also surged over 5 percent, while Nifty Realty added 3.8 percent. Nifty IT and Nifty Metal also rose around 2 percent, respectively. However, Nifty FMCG and Nifty Pharma ended the day in the red.

Axis Bank, Eicher Motors, ICICI Bank, Maruti, and IndusInd Bank were the top gainers on the Nifty50 index, while HUL, Nestle India, Bharti Infratel, Sun Pharma, and Tech Mahindra led the losses.

Broader markets were also in the green for the day. Nifty Midcap surged 2.3 percent and Nifty Smallcap jumped 3.4 percent.

Meanwhile, globally MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 2.6 percent and E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 index climbed 3.38 percent on Friday after the United States joined a handful of other governments to issue guidelines to re-start their economies.

As of Friday, India had reported over 11,200 cases of COVID-19 infection and over 400 deaths. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended a countrywide lockdown in a move to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

First Published:Apr 17, 2020 3:37 PM IST