Market Movers: What led to a 12% rally in MTNL?

“Due to financial reasons, including MTNL’s high debt, the merger of MTNL with BSNL is deferred,” Minister of State for Communications Devusinh Chauhan told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

The government had approved the revival plan of BSNL and MTNL in October 2019 as part of their revival package. The Cabinet had then also approved a revival package of Rs 29,937 crore for the two loss-making telecom firms.

Paras Defence gets new tech

Paras Defence and Space Technologies said the government has transferred an important technology for optronic submarine periscope to it. The equipment is an ‘eye’ of the submarine and is used for surveillance applications.

This technology has been transferred to the company by way of a Licensing Agreement for Transfer of Technology of Optronic Submarine Periscope by IRDE, DRDO. The DRDO Laboratory has also nominated Paras Defence and Space Technologies as the production agency for the Optronic Submarine Periscope.

“We believe that Paras Defence will be the first Indian company to manufacture the optronic submarine periscope on a turnkey basis, which has good domestic business opportunities along with export business potential,” said the company.

The stock climbed 7 per cent following the disclosure.

Sugar stocks rally

Sugar stocks rallied up to 20 per cent on Thursday amid reports that India is well on track to meet its ethanol blending target. As per estimates, it achieved 10 per cent blending by FY22. The target is to double it by FY25.

“As sugar factories expand distillery capacities and as oil marketing companies improve their storage capacities and infrastructure the positive tailwinds with respect to Ethanol will likely boost the profitability of integrated sugar companies and that of ethanol plant producers going forward,” said S Ranganathan, Head of Research at LKP Securities.

Moreover, the government recently clarified that there is no plan to put a cap on sugar export, which has also worked for the sector.