FxWirePro: Daily Commodity Tracker - 21st March, 2022 
The Indian sovereign bonds held steady Wednesday post the presentation of the 2017-18 Union Budget by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Also, investors are eyeing the INR110 billion bond auction by the central government, scheduled to be held on February 3.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year bonds, which moves inversely to its price, hovered around 6.40 percent, the yield on long-term 30-year note fell 1/2 basis point to 7.03 percent while the yield on short-term 3-year note held flat at 6.30 percent by 07:30 GMT.
The latest budget has encompassed a larger section of the income tax deduction, reducing the tax slab to 5 percent for those in the income bracket of INR2.5-5 lakh. However, following the footsteps of demonetization, the Finance Ministry also led to the conclusion that no cash transactions will be henceforth allowed beyond a limit of INR3 lakh.
Apart from a busy state election calendar, there is considerable uncertainty over the impact of demonetization on growth. Implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is also pending for the second half of the year, reported DBS Bank in its research note.
Further, the Government of India is scheduled to auction worth INR110 billion bonds this week in its last auction for the fiscal. Traders await details of the papers, likely to be announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after market hours today.
Lastly, markets are also awaiting the RBI’s first bi-monthly monetary policy meeting of 2017, scheduled to be held on February 7-8.
Meanwhile, the 30-share benchmark Sensex traded 1.00 percent higher at 27,933.69, while the 50-share benchmark Nifty futures traded 0.79 percent or 69.45 points up at 8,637.05 by 07:50 GMT.
