The key domestic benchmarks are likely to witness a flat opening today tracking a muted trend across Asia after the World Bank cut its growth forecast for the global economy in 2015 to 3 per cent from 3.4 per cent estimated earlier amid a slowdown in Europe and China. China’s Shanghai Composite was trading with slim gains amid hopes that policymakers were taking efforts to avert a cash crunch; however, the advance was curbed by a reduction in China’s economic growth forecast for 2015 by the World Bank to 7.1 per cent from 7.2 per cent earlier. Hang Seng posted modest gains while Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled as a stronger yen dimmed the appeal of exporter stocks. Back home, all eyes will be on the WPI data to be released today which may show that India’s wholesale price inflation likely accelerated to 0.4 per cent in December 2014 after stagnating in November 2014.
