The BSE benchmark Sensex was trading higher by nearly 150 points on encouraging corporate earnings and a string of government reforms, including NPA package for banks and national steel policy.

The domestic equities also got a boost after the US Federal Reserve kept its policy rate unchanged in its two-day policy review.

According to brokers, banking stocks led the recovery following the government’s decision to bring an ordinance to empower the Reserve Bank to effectively deal with the problem of mounting bad loans in the banking sector.

A proposal to amend Section 35 A of the Banking Regulation Act through the ordinance route was approved by the Cabinet yesterday.

The Union Cabinet yesterday also gave its approval for the National Steel Policy (NSP) 2017 that aims to achieve steel making capacity of 300 million tonnes by 2030 with an additional investment of Rs 10 lakh crore.

The Cabinet also approved a policy for use of domestic steel products in government organisations.

At 12.35 p.m., the 30-share BSE index Sensex was up 144.13 points or 0.48 per cent at 30,038.93 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was up 19.7 points or 0.21 per cent at 9,331.65.

Among BSE sectoral indices, banking index was the star-perfomer and was up 1.88 per cent, followed by consumer durables 0.94 per cent, capital goods 0.44 per cent and FMCG 0.3 per cent. On the other hand, realty index was down 1.36 per cent, metal 1.29 per cent, oil & gas 0.57 per cent and auto 0.43 per cent.

Top five Sensex gainers were ICICI Bank (+8.65%), Axis Bank (+3.77%), State Bank of India (+1.87%), Adani Ports (+1.71%) and HUL (+1.22%), while the major losers were Tata Motors (-1.8%), ONGC (-1.1%), HDFC Bank (-1.00%), Tata Steel (-0.76%) and TCS (-0.7%).