The 30-Share Sensex continued its bearish trend with forceful selling action seen across FMCG and Banking stocks.

Indian equities started the day on a firm note on key rate cuts by the central bank, but failed to maintain the gains and reacted downwards in late morning trade on economic fears.

For the week ended Feb. 21, 2009, inflation fell further by 33 basis points to 3.03%, as against 3.36% during the last week.

The inflationary figures fall due to lower prices of food items including fruits, vegetables, tea and some manufactured items.

Inflation stood at 5.69% during the corresponding period last year.

BSE Consumer durables, which gained 0.20% was the only major gainer among sectoral indices.

The losers’ list included BSE FMCG, which fell 3.36%, Bankex lost 3.27%, Oil&Gas slipped 2.86% and Power was down by 2.75%.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap were also trading down by 1.29% each.

At 02:00 p.m., the 30-share index Sensex, which opened with a gain of 88.54 points, was down by 203.24 points at 8,243.25 after hitting a high of 8,535.03 and a low of 8,213.53.

In the meantime, the broad based Nifty lost 63.40 points at 2,581.80 after touching a high of 2,663.90 and a low of 2,578.75.

The overall market breadth was negative. Out of the total 2,304 shares traded at BSE, 666 went up and 1,533 posted losses.

The top gainers were Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (3.97%), Sterlite Industries (India) (1.49%), Tata Consultancy Services (1.42%),and Wipro (0.63%).

On the other hand, the top losers’ were Ranbaxy Laboratories (10.84%), Tata Power Company (5.83%),  ICICI Bank (5.05%) and Hindustan Unilever (4.84%) and Reliance.