Indian IT stocks pull down market on Tuesday

BSE Sensex was down 193.60 points at 27655.96 and NSE Nifty was down 71.45 points at 8561.30.

The Union Budget 2017 is scheduled to be tabled on Wednesday, Feb 1.

The market fell intraday on Tuesday after the H-1B reform bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives, media reported.

The legislation, among other things, calls for more than doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to USD 130,000, making it difficult for firms to use the programme to replace American employees with foreign workers, including from India, reported Moneycontrol.com.

According to the website Moneycontrol.com, the High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017 introduced by California Congressman Zoe Lofgren prioritises market based allocation of visas to those companies willing to pay 200 per cent of a wage calculated by survey, eliminates the category of lowest pay, and raises the salary level at which H-1B dependent employer are exempt from non displacement and recruitment attestation requirements to greater than USD 130,000. This is more than double of the current H-1B minimum wage of USD 60,000 which was established in 1989 and since then has remained unchanged.

India's leading private sector lender, ICICI Bank reported that its December quarter profit this year was 19 per cent lower than that reported in the same quarter a year ago.

The company also saw deterioration in its asset quality during the quarter.

Gross non-performing assets as a percentage of gross advances increased 109 basis points sequentially to 7.91 percent and net NPA as a percentage of net advances rose 78 bps to 4.35 percent, according to media reports.

Bajaj Auto reported 4.7 percent fall in profit in the third quarter to Rs 924.6 crore as against Rs 970.6 crore in the same period last year. Revenue for the quarter decline 4.1 percent to Rs 59,500 per unit, media reported.

Image: Wikimedia Commons