ITC continued to bleed for the second consecutive day on Monday, after the Finance Minister, while presenting Union Budget 2020-21 on Saturday, proposed to increase the National Calamity Contingency Duty (NCCD) on cigarettes, hookah, chewing tobacco, snuff and tobacco extracts and essence. The stock slipped over 5 per cent and hit a fresh 52-week low of Rs 207.20 apiece on the BSE.

Stocks of other cigarette and tobacco manufacturers shares also declined in trade. While Godfrey Phillips India slipped over 4 per cent to Rs 1086.50, VST Industries fell over 2 per cent to Rs 4,128 levels.

The death toll in China's coronavirus epidemic soared to 361 with 57 deaths on Sunday alone while the number of confirmed cases climbed to 17,205, Chinese health officials announced on Monday.

China's National Health Commission in its daily report on Monday said that 2,829 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide on February 2, taking the total number of infection to 17,205.

Shares of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) were trading higher for the seventh straight day, up 10 per cent to Rs 1,328 on the BSE on Saturday. The stock has rallied 17 per cent in the past two trading days.

IRCTC, the government-owned travel support services company, was trading at its highest level since market debut on October 10, 2019.

Indian shares got off to a choppy start in a special trading session on Saturday ahead of the annual budget when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to unveil a raft of measures to revive a sagging economy.

In early trade shares slipped in reaction to an overnight shakeout in global markets on growing concerns about the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak in China, but focus is set to shift to the domestic budget.

As the Union Budget 2020 is set to be unveiled soon, a number of measures, including a cut in personal income tax, reduction in interest rates on loans for education and agriculture, as well as aggressive push on infrastructure spending are expected to be announced.

Attempting to revive a sluggish economy, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely to pull out all stops to spur consumer demand and investment and set out a clear road map for achieving the ambitious target of USD 5 trillion economy by 2025.

The government has released the GST collections data for January ahead of the Budget 2020. The GST collection has crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark, the third month in a row with improved compliance and plugging of evasion, reports said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Saturday at 11 am.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said he has received around 400 suggestions from people for the upcoming state budget 2020-21.

Sawant, who also holds the finance portfolio, had launched a website on January 28 inviting people to write to him about their expectations and suggestions for the budget, which will be presented in the Assembly on February 6.

Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel has bagged the immense Nuagaon iron ore block in Odisha in keenly contested iron ore auctions.

The block, currently held by merchant miner KJS Ahluwalia with deposits of 790 million tonnes of iron ore, is the first of 21 lapsing blocks to have been successfully auctioned. JSW Steel quoted a premium of 95.2 per cent and won the block at online auctions, upstaging strong contenders like ArcelorMittal and Vedanta Ltd.

Embassy Property Development is merging some of its residential and commercial properties with Indiabulls Real Estate to set up a new entity, the latter said on Friday.

The companies did not share details of the properties they are merging. Under the proposed merger, Indiabulls will issue equity shares of Rs 2 each to the shareholders of Embassy, in accordance with the swap ratio approved by the boards of both the companies, Indiabulls said.

Shares of his Amazon.com surged 12 per cent to $2,100 in extended trading late on Thursday in New York, after the largest US e-commerce company reported fourth-quarter results that smashed Wall Street estimates.

Bezos, already the world’s richest person, added $13.2 billion to his fortune in 15 minutes. At the current price, his net worth would be about $129.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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