Bangalore: On the back of strong global cues and government's plans of tax reform, the Sensex ended the last week with a gain of 1.6 percent. On the sectoral front, metal sector gained by 3.2 percent to 9,869 points. When markets closed today, the total market capitalization of the metal index was 451,450.44 crore. During the day, the metal index went down by 219.03 points to close the day 1.79 percent below yesterday's close of 12,213.25 points. The index touched an intraday high of 12,392.65 points and a low of 11,891.0 points. In all, a total of 2.08 crore metal shares were traded through the day. Post the General Budget 2009, the excise duty on branded jewelery has been reduced from two percent to nil. Companies in metals and mining sector can now avail of weighted deduction of 150 percent of qualified research and development expenditure on approved in-house research and development facility. Customs duty on serially numbered gold bars (other than tola bars) and gold coins has been increased from 100 per 10 gram to 200 per 10 gram. In the last one week, non-ferrous metals producer Sterlite eased 4.1 percent to 635.05 and leading aluminium producer Hindalco slid 3.2 percent to 104.70 rupees as metal prices retreated. Other sector, which ended the week on positive node was reality sector, which rallied by eight percent to 3,963 points.