Sensex rises; Tata Steel among top gainers

By Jessica Kuruthukulangara

REUTERS - Indian shares rose on Friday and were headed for a fifth session of gains in six, buoyed by a jump in Tata Steel on strong quarterly production numbers, while investors waited for a meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council later in the day.

Analysts expect the council, chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, to make adjustments to the tax structure for certain payers.

Frequent changes in tax rates after the launch of GST have heightened business uncertainty, because of which many firms are failing to register for the new system.

Indian shares were headed for their first weekly gain in three, with the broader NSE Nifty up 1.8 percent, and the BSE Sensex 1.7 percent higher.

"Markets have corrected a lot recently. Whenever we see good amount of selling coming in, traders usually jump to make short-term gains," Saurabh Jain, assistant vice-president of research at SMC Global Securities said.

The NSE index was up 0.74 percent at 9,961.45 as of 0620 GMT, while the BSE index was 0.63 percent higher at 31,790.23.

Tata Steel was among the top gainers on the NSE index, rising as much as 4.6 percent, after the steelmaker said its provisional production and sales in India rose 11 percent and 19.5 percent, respectively, in the second quarter.

The Nifty metal index gained as much as 2.9 percent in its biggest intraday percentage gain since Aug. 14.

Lenders also rose, with the Nifty PSU bank index climbing as much as 1.5 percent. State Bank of India was up 2 percent.

(Reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)