Mumbai: The sensex opened marginally higher and later showed narrow movements during morning trading in continued lackluster activity on the Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Jul 16, 2004) in the absence of purchases from institutional investors.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened up at 4894.40 as against yesterday's (Jul; 15, 2004) close of 4888.19 and later fluctuated in a range of 4915.68 and 4874.46 before being quoted at 4883.46 at 10.30 hrs (IST), down by 4.73 points.

Domestic investors remained cautious despite the SEBI's interest liability regularisation scheme for brokers in a bid to settle the longstanding problem of registration fees.

Under the scheme, if brokers pay entire outstanding principal amount of fee along with 20 per cent outstanding interest for a specified period, the balance outstanding interest would be waived off.

Brokers, however, attributed the lack of interest to negative activity by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and domestic mutual funds, which were net sellers in the past couple of sessions.