Feb 23 (Reuters) - Indian equity benchmarks rose on Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs, but the gains were capped as persistent concerns over the disruption from AI kept IT shares under pressure.
While Trump has imposed a new temporary 15% tariff on imports from all countries, India has delayed plans to send a trade delegation to Washington this week, Reuters reported, citing a source in the trade ministry.
The delegation had been set to leave for talks to finalise an interim trade deal with U.S. tariffs on Indian goods set to be cut to 18%.
"India's effective tariff rate is now likely to be 11-13%. This compares favorably to China, whose effective rate is likely to be above 15%, while most other Asian peers will have similar effective tariff rates to that of India," Emkay Global Financial Services said.
The benchmark Nifty 50 closed 0.55% higher at 25,713, and the BSE Sensex added 0.58% to 83,294.66.
The broader small-caps rose 0.3%, while mid-caps lost 0.4%.
Thirteen of the 16 major sectors rose with heavy-weight financials and state-owned banks adding 0.9% and 1.4%, respectively.
The IT index lost 1.4%, taking its year-to-date drop to 16.7%. Jefferies downgraded six Indian IT companies, including TCS and Infosys, on concerns about likely structural changes to IT business due to AI tools.
Infosys and Wipro dropped 1.9% each, while Mphasis and Coforge shed 2.7% and 3.9%, respectively.
IDFC First Bank tumbled 16.1% and was the biggest loser among Nifty 500 companies after the lender said it was investigating a suspected fraud of $65 million by some employees involving accounts of government entities in the northern state of Haryana.
AU Small Finance Bank slid 5.2% after it was dropped from a list of banks that do business with the Haryana government.
Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran and Vivek Kumar M in Bengaluru; Editing by Sumana Nandy, Mrigank Dhaniwala and Ronojoy Mazumdar
Source: Reuters