February 26, 2013 / 11:24 AM IST
Railway stocks were in focus as railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal will deliver his maiden Rail Budget at 12 pm in the Lok sabha on Tuesday. Six out of eight stocks were under pressure.
Titagarh Wagons, the major company in wagons manufacturing, fell nearly 2 percent. According to experts, if government hikes rail fare then the funds, which government gets, will be used for orders of new wagons.
Kalindee Rail Nirman dropped nearly 3 percent while
Hind Rectifiers crashed 5.5 percent.
Kernex Microsystems,
Texmaco Rail & Engineering and
Stone India were down 1-3 percent.
However,
Zicom Security jumped 5.5 percent and
BEML, which provides coaches for railway, gained more than 2 percent.
The Railway Budget is expected to lean towards pragmatism and fiscal prudence. It will be interesting to see if he bites the bullet on a fare hike or will he look at other measures to mobilise resources to offset the burden of the recent diesel price hike.
CNBC-TV18 sources say that a passenger amenity cess could be introduced and the railway fares may include a fuel adjustment component to adjust for the diesel price revisiion. If passenger fares are hiked this time, it will be the second hike in his 4 months tenure. Remember, fares were hiked by 21 percent on January 22 after which railway minister said it would not be revised in the Budget again.
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