Sensex up, at 17,185.68 pts, Dubai crisis not to impact domestic banks: RBI

Sensex up, at 17,185.68 pts
The benchmark Sensex on Thursday ended flat in a highly volatile trade which saw the index remaining range bound notwithstanding a good start, amid worries of rising food inflation.
The benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex, which had lost 28 points in previous session, recovered by 15.77 points in late trade to close the day at 17,185.68 points, after moving between 17,361.27 and 17,128.21 points.
While the positive factors like firm Asian and European markets and Goldman Sachs' forecast of a faster growth for the domestic economy kept the market in better shape during the day, a rise in food inflation capped the gains towards the last hour trade. Food inflation has touched 17.47 per cent in the third week of November.
In similar fashion, the wide-based National Stock Exchange's Nifty edged up 8.45 points to close at 5,131.70 points. It moved between 5,181.00 and 5,106.60 during the session.
Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 18 closed higher and 12 ended with losses. Major supporters to the market were the counters in the healthcare, metals, realty, oil and gas and power segments, while the auto and capital goods sectors were down on emergence of profit-selling.
A fall in heavy-weight stocks of Infosys Technologies, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors and, Reliance Infra and Jaiprakash Associates mainly pulled down the market.
Dubai crisis not to impact domestic banks: RBI
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today said the domestic banks do not have much exposure to the debt-ridden Dubai World and hence their balance sheets will not be materially affected from the crisis.n the larger context, the rating agency Moody's also said the ratings of Asian banks are not likely to be downgraded, unless there is a massive restructuring in Dubai.RBI Deputy Governor Usha Thorat said that the crisis will not impact the country's banking sector as the exposure "is not significant and not a matter of concern...It is not something that materially affects their balance sheets".Moody's also said Asian banks have relatively small exposure to Dubai and Dubai World companies. "Therefore, no rating actions have been taken on Asian banks as a result of the requested standstill on select Dubai World debt payments. Nor does Moody's expects that there will be any need of negative rating action on Asian banks at a later date...."So far as the domestic banks are concerned, Bank of Baroda has an exposure of Rs 5,000 crore in Dubai. State Bank of India too had provided Rs 1,500 crore to some UAE companies.Moody's said, "The Asian banks have billions of dollars of exposures to the UAE entities, but this represents small per cent of their assets. To date, we have found no Asian banks to have sufficiently high levels of exposure to members of Dubai World group to warrant any ratings actions