Mumbai: Share values suffered a further setback on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on March 4, sending the benchmark down by 32.47 points to close at 3244.80 on heavy offloading by local funds and operators.

The market-friendly Budget failed to attract any follow-up buying causing widespread losses in share values, dealers said.

According to market-men, a leading financial institution has sold select index-based shares including Tisco and Telco.

Under the leadership of software bellwether, Infosys Tech, majority of IT counters bore the brunt of selling by operators as well as foreign funds.

Right from the onset of business, the sentiment was weak due to negative advices from Wall Street where the war fear and weaker-than-expected economic data by US weighed heavily. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped by 53.22 and 17.23 points last night respectively.

The news that Washington was considering a bill which would make outsourcing difficult, especially to offshore locations like India, also partly affected the IT segment.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened lower at 3271.06 as against yesterday's close of 3277.27 and remained in the negative territory throughout the day. Finally it concluded at 3244.80, a fall of 0.99 per cent. The low of the day was 3240.16.

The broad-based BSE-100 also dipped by 17.47 points to 1606.16 from previous close of 1623.63.

PTI