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A vendor holds a cigarette pack printed with a picture bearing likeness to Chelsea's soccer player John Terry at his roadside stall in New Delhi January 3, 2012 (representational image).Reuters file

With the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council deciding to fix the upper limit for cigarettes at Rs 4,170 per 1,000 sticks or 290 percent ad valorem at its 12th meeting on Thursday, ITC shares gained as high as 7.83 percent before receding to Rs 288, still a gain of 7.21 percent, at around 11.50 am on the BSE on Friday.

Music Broadcast, which owns and operates FM station Radio City, listed at Rs 420, a premium of 26 percent to its issue price of Rs 333 per share. However, it gave up gains and was trading at Rs 376 at around 2.35 pm.

The Sensex was up 79 points at 29,665 led by ITC, Lupin and Maruti Suzuki.

With the GST Council clearing the UGST (Union GST) and SGST (State GST) on Thursday, the indirect tax regime got one step closer to implementation from July 1.

The earlier draft laws —CGST, IGST and the Compensation Law — will have to be cleared by the Union Cabinet and then by the Parliament. States will have to go through a similar exercise for SGST.

These will be followed by the most important step — fitment of various goods and services in the four tax brackets of 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent and 28 per cent.

The cess cap on pan masala is 135 percent ad valorem and on coal it will be Rs 400 per tonne.

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Stocks at year-high

TVS Motor, RBL Bank, Tata Power, IndusInd Bank, Suzlon Energy, Maruti Suzuki, Godrej Properties and HCL Technologies are some of the stocks that hit fresh 52-week highs on Friday.

Eros gains after calling off bond issue

Eros International Media gained almost 3 percent on Friday to trade at Rs 225; on Thursday it rose from Rs 199 to close at Rs 220. Eros International, the NYSE-listed arm of the company, had called off its approximately $200 million bond issue for not getting the "right rate". 

""The bond markets were a bit soft since the beginning of the week. Some of the other issuances, such as Noble Group, got priced at around nine per cent. The average cost of our total debt is around seven per cent, so to refinance it all at nine wasn't making sense to us, especially when most of the debt is not even due and particularly because this was pitched as a pure refinance deal without adding to gross debt," the Business Standard quoted Jyoti Deshpande, MD of Eros International, as saying a few days ago.

Eros International Media plans to produce 50 films in eight languages this year.

The rupee opened lower at 65.46 to the US dollar on Friday.

IT stocks Infosys, Wipro and TCS were trading with marginal gains at around 2.40 pm. TCS was up 0.38 percent at Rs 2,528, Infosys at Rs 1,037 and Wipro at Rs 502.