NEW DELHI: With the Union Budget likely to be tabled on a trading holiday (Saturday, February 1), stock exchanges are most likely going to work an extra day next month.While BSE is on record saying it is looking to open for trading on the Budget day, NSE says it has nothing share on the subject as of now.
In 2015, when the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Budget on a Saturday, February 28, stock exchanges remained shut.BSE is indeed looking to open for trading on the Budget Day this time, and a circular would be out regarding the same within a week, a BSE spokesperson told ETMarkets.com.
The NSE spokesperson said he has no comment to make on the matter.
BSE Sensex fell 0.98 per cent on July 5, when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the full Budget for the current financial year.
It was followed by 2 per cent drop on the subsequent day, amid some market-unfriendly Budget proposals such as tax on share buybacks and a hike in minimum public shareholding of listed companies to 35 per cent from 25 per cent.Earlier that year, the index had risen 0.6 per cent on February 1 when Acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented the Interim Budget.In the last decade, domestic stock indices have rarely jumped 1 per cent or more on Budget days.
In most cases, volatility gauge usually declined following the eventful day.For Budget 2020, there are expectations of some relief on the personal tax front, even though there seems to be limited fiscal space for the government to offer a large relief.Some analysts hope that the Finance Minister would remove the long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax since it has hardly yielded anything to the government.
They say the security transaction tax (STT) can be increased instead.Besides, the market is hoping for a few sops for insurance, realty and auto sectors, analysts told ETMarkets.com.Measures in recent times and the Prime Ministers ongoing meetings with corporate honchos have heightened market expectations.
Investors also believe the government may announce many demand-side measures in the Budget to boost the economy, said Amar Ambani, Head of Research for Institutional Equities at YES Securities.