Oil prices posted their strongest opening to a year since 2014 on Tuesday, with crude rising to mid-2015 highs amid large anti-government rallies in Iran and ongoing supply cuts led by OPEC and Russia.

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $60.61 a barrel at 0423 GMT, up 19 cents, or 0.3 per cent, after hitting $60.73 earlier in the day, the highest since June 2015.

Rejecting the reports that the subscription for the eight percent Savings Bonds Scheme will be closed on Tuesday, the Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg on Tuesday said the government will not end the existing scheme but replace it with 7.75 percent Savings Bonds Scheme.

Shares of two Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Group companies - L&T Infotech (LTI) and L&T Technology Services (LTTS) – hit their respective 52-week highs by rallying 7% each on the BSE in intra-day trade in an otherwise subdued market.

LTI, a global technology consulting and digital solutions company, rallied 7% to Rs 1,229, while LTTS which focuses on engineering and R&D (ER&D) services, too surged 7% to Rs 1,141 on the BSE. At 11:08 AM; the S&P BSE Sensex was up marginally by 0.05% at 33,829 points.

State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, made a whopping Rs 17.7 billion in charges levied on customers failing to maintain their minimum monthly average balance during the April-November 2017 period, according to media reports quoting finance ministry data.

Annual growth in the bank’s revenue on this count cannot be arrived at as SBI had collected no money from customers for not maintaining average balance during the comparable period in 2016.

India's factory activity expanded at the fastest pace in five years in December, a private sector survey showed on Tuesday, buoyed by a rise in output and new orders, which allowed firms to raise prices.

Tuesday's data firms up views that business in Asia's third-largest economy continues to recover but also highlights risks that rising price pressures will keep the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from slashing interest rates further.

In a surprising move at the start of the year, State Bank of India (SBI) reduced its base rate and benchmark prime lending rates (BPLR) for existing customers by 30 basis points each effective from January 1.

One basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.

TVS Motor Company hit a new high of Rs 795, up 4% on the BSE in early morning trade, after the company registered 39% growth in sales at 256,909 units in the month of December 2017. It had sold 184,944 units in December 2016.

TVS Motor Company had registered a sales growth of 12% at 251,965 units in November 2017.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) will issue notices to five telecom operators, including Tata Teleservices, Telenor and Reliance Jio, to recover Rs 2,578 crore, in the wake of the CAG red-flagging understatement of revenues by the firms.

"The DoT will raise demand of Rs 2,578 crore from the five telecom operators as was mentioned by the CAG in its report this month. The demand will be raised after reconciling the accounts," an official source told PTI.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has played down superstar Rajinikanth's announcement of joining politics and said the actor would not fare well in it as he was aligning with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He has knowingly or unknowingly created a perception that he is aligned with the BJP or rather the BJP is aligning with him, DMK spokesperson A Saravanan told ANI, and added that the BJP too has sent out a similar message.

Automobile major Maruti Suzuki India on Monday reported a 10.3 per cent rise in its monthly sales for December.

According to the company, its total sales including exports during the month under review rose to 130,066 units from 117,908 units sold during the corresponding month of 2016.

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