Indian shares ended at their highest level in nearly two weeks on Wednesday, after the government’s decision to raise the price at which it will buy new-season common rice variety from domestic farmers boosted sentiment.

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The benchmark BSE Sensex closed 0.75 percent higher at 35,645.40. The broader NSE Nifty ended 0.65 percent higher at 10,769.90. Both the indexes ended at their highest closing levels since June 22.

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Asian stocks were shaky while major currencies barely budged in early trade on Thursday, as financial markets remained in a state of anxious uncertainty on the eve of a U.S. deadline to slap tariffs on Chinese imports. The United States plans to implement tariffs on $50 billion worth of imports from China as both nations remained locked in a bitter trade dispute that has convulsed global financial markets in recent weeks. On July 6, tariffs on $34 billion worth of imports will take effect, and Beijing has promised to retaliate in kind.

In a major fillip to the farm sector, the government on Wednesday approved a steep hike in the minimum support price (MSP) of 14 kharif crops, which will cost the exchequer more than Rs 15,000 crore. Meanwhile, the services sector returned to growth during June and registered the fastest rate of expansion in a year, supported by robust increase in new business orders, said a monthly survey.

The Finance Ministry is going to meet heads of banks to discuss NPA resolution structure. The meeting will start at 10 am. Meanwhile, a Crisis report says that banks' unsecured loan book has grown four times the bank credit during the past three years, helped by a rise in discretionary spending, technology-driven disbursements and lower interest rates. "Between fiscals 2015 and 2018, unsecured credit - comprising personal, small and medium enterprise (SME), and credit card loans - clocked a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27 percent, or almost four times growth in bank credit," Crisil said in a report on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought shares worth Rs 278.84 crore on a net basis, while foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold equities worth Rs 1,043.31 crore on Wednesday, provisional data showed.

The 41st annual general meeting (AGM) of Mukesh Ambani-controlled oil-to-retail-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is scheduled to be held on July 5, 2018 at 11am in Mumbai on Thursday. For the last few years, RIL has made massive Jio related announcements during the AGM and is expected to continue once again. RIL is likely to announce the commercial launch and prices for Jio Fiber service.

India will not be partnering with any other country to take on the United States over steel and aluminium tariffs. In May this year India lodged a protest with the WTO over Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminium imports from all countries except Canada and Mexico.

The Reserve Bank of India has issued licence to Bank of China to launch operations in India, Mint reported. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a commitment to Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow Bank of China to set up branches in India when they met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Chinese city of Qingdao last month, the report added.

India is looking at the possibility of falling back on the rupee-rial arrangement for importing oil from Iran in the wake of US sanctions on buying oil from the Persian Gulf nation, PTI reported.

Venture capital (VC) firm Inventus Capital is in the process of making a first close of Rs175 crore for its third fund by early next month, Mint reported. Inventus is targeting a total corpus of Rs 325 crore for the fund, the report added.

The Union cabinet on Wednesday allowed the human resource development (HRD) ministry to raise Rs 1 trillion from the market for funding education research and infrastructure, Mint reported.