New Delhi: Indian shares opened higher on Friday, the last trading session of 2017 with BSE benchmark Sensex rising over 130 points to a high of 33,986. The Nifty50 index rose over 30 points to trade above 10,500 level. Except for metal and IT most other sectoral indices were in green. Positive Asian shares boosted sentiments.

Sentiments also remained buoyant as foreign institutional investors bought shares worth Rs 563 crore in cash market yesterday.

Markets ended lower on Thursday on concerns of higher fiscal deficit as the government announced. Despite the negative closing yesterday, Sensex has returned 27.36 per cent so far in 2017.

Among Nifty stocks, Bharti Infratel was the top gainer up 2 per cent at Rs 375.60, followed by Asian Paints, Axis Bank, UltraTech cement, Lupin and Bharti Airtel, which rose between 1-1.6 per cent.

Shares of Reliance Communications surged as much as 30 per cent after the company yesterday said that it has entered into a  tower, fiber and media convergence node (MCN) assets. The deal will help the company bring down its debt significantly, say analysts.

Meanwhile, Wipro was the top loser among the Nifty50 stocks, down 1.30 per cent. Hindalco, M&M, ICICI Bank, Gail, Zee Entertainment, HDFC Bank were the other prominent losers in the Nifty.

Elsewhere Asian shares traded higher on Friday. Shanghai Composite was up 0.08 per cent, Hang Seng traded 0.30 per cent higher while the Kospi index rose 1.26 per cent.

COURTESY=  timesnownews.com