Mumbai/Singapore: Finance minister Arun Jaitley surprised bullion markets by keeping the import duty on gold and silver unchanged at 10% in its Union Budget, a move likely to limit overseas purchases by the second-biggest bullion consumer and further encourage smuggling.

ndian gold futures jumped 2% on Thursday, widening the premium over global prices which had narrowed on the expectation of a duty cut.

Delhi has become the world's second most populous city in 2014 after Tokyo, more than doubling its population since 1990 to 25 million, according to a UN report.

The 2014 revision of the World Urbanisation Prospects launched yesterday said that India is projected to add the highest number of people to its urban population by 2050, ahead of China.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave income tax relief to small tax payers and manufacturers but retained the 10% super rich tax on individuals and companies in addition to extending tax breaks to foreign portfolio investors, power producers and external commercial borrowers in his maiden Union Budget.

Investors looking to a bull run following finance minister Arun Jaitley’s maiden Budget were a confused lot, with the Budget scoring as many hits as misses. Eventually, after an exceptionally volatile intra-day trading that saw the Sensex move more than 800 points, the benchmark lost 72 points.

The government today allocated Rs 9,474 crore to the Civil Aviation Ministry, out of which an equity infusion of Rs 6,500 crore was earmarked for Air India.

Overall, the government has allocated Rs 9,474 crore for the ministry including investments in public enterprises for the financial year 2014-15, up from revised estimate of Rs 8,502 crore in FY'14.

NEW DELHI: Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd -0.22 % rallied as much as 1.7 per cent in trade on Friday, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed overseas investors, to buy shares of the private sector lender.

At 09:30 a.m.; the stock pared some of the morning gains but was still trading 0.6 per cent higher at Rs 873. It hit a low of Rs 868 and a high of Rs 882.50 in trade today.

Shares of information technology (IT) companies are trading higher in the range of 1-4% on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) after Infosys reported a better-than-expected consolidated net profit for the first quarter ended June 30, 2014 (Q1).

All four large-cap IT stocks - Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), HCL Technologies and Wipro are up in the range of 1-2%. Rolta, Tech Mahindra, KPIT Cummins, NIIT Technologies and Hexaware Technologies are up 2-4% on NSE.

India’s second largest information technology (IT) services company Infosys today cheered investors by posting earnings for April-June 2014 (Q1FY2015) on expected lines, and throwing up a positive surprise on the margins and volumes growth front.

The Bangalore-based company, which has missed Street estimates for several quarters in past, today posted a 21.6% year-on-year growth in net profit at Rs 2,886 crore, and a 13.3% year-on-year growth in revenues at Rs 12,770 crore.

KOLKATA: Anil Ambani-headed Reliance Communications 1.22 % (RCOM) plans to slash 37 per cent of its 15,000-strong workforce by the month-end by outsourcing its call centre and sharedservices operations in a bold restructuring move aimed at exiting non-core businesses and cutting costs to boost profitability.

NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries and its partners BP plc of UK and Canada's Niko Resources have slapped an arbitration notice on the government seeking implementation of a delayed gas-price rise.

The trio had on May 9 issued a "pre-arbitration notice" saying failure to implement the increase from due date of April 1 is preventing them from sanctioning investments of almost US$ 4 billion this year.

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