After opening the day marginally lower, share markets in India witnessed selling pressure throughout the day and ended the day on a weak note. Losses were seen across most sectors with stocks in the telecom sector and stocks in the realty sector leading the losses.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood lower by 228 points (down 0.7%) and the NSE Nifty closed down by 82 points (down 0.8%). The BSE Mid Cap index ended the day down 1%, while the BSE Small Cap index ended the day down by 0.7%.

Asian stock markets too, finished in red. As of the most recent closing prices, the Hang Seng was down by 0.59% and the Shanghai Composite was down by 1.24%. The Nikkei 225 was down by 0.32%. Meanwhile, European markets were trading in the green. The FTSE was up by 0.26%. The DAX stood flat, while the CAC 40 was up by 0.13%.

The rupee was trading at Rs 64.43 against the US$ in the afternoon session.

As per an article in the Economic Times, Financial Minister Arun Jaitley said that India is following the roadmap of fiscal consolidation.

Also, as per the news, a finance ministry statement quoting Jaitley stated that fiscal deficit as a ratio of GDP stood at 3.9% in 2015-16 and 3.5% in 2016-17 and is budgeted to be 3.2% for the current financial year.

One must note that in the last one decade, India is making serious efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit level. Ever since, the new government came in it has been in favor of fiscal consolidation and meet the long term fiscal deficit target of 3% by FY17-18. This will be the lowest target compared to the last couple of years, as can be seen from the chart below:

Fiscal Deficit target of 3% of GDP

That said, challenges remain. The notebandi exercise has resulted in a slowdown. Further, government has announced flurry of projects but execution is still pending. This means the government needs to relax its spending to spurt the growth again.