The Indian stock market crashed on Thursday morning following incessant selling by investors on the United States imposing travel bans as well as India suspending visas amid rising number of COVID-19 cases.
At 12:30 pm local time, India's benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty were down 7.2 per cent each or 2,196 points and 660 points respectively after touching a 23-month and 17-month low, respectively earlier in the day as 148 billion US dollars worth of investor wealth was wiped out.
Sensex hit an intra-day low of 32,990.01, a level last seen on April 4, 2018 while Nifty hit an intraday low of 9648.65, a level last seen on July 10, 2017 and hitting the below-10,000 mark for the first time in two years, reports Xinhua.
The declaration of COVID-19 as pandemic by World Health Organization pulled down the Indian rupee by 82 paise at 74.50 to the US dollar over its previous close.
"Coronavirus has put the world in a kind of lockdown situation, with more and more countries putting restriction on travel and force market in a melt-down situation. If the same continues, it may hamper the supply disruption and also dent other connected sectors which will create a significant halt in trading activities across and as a result reversal in the market might not be seen any soon," said a note by CR Forex Advisors, a treasury and foreign exchange consulting firm in Mumbai.
The number of COVID-19 cases in India rose to 73 Thursday, up from 60 in the previous day, India's federal health ministry said.
