Mumbai: Banking shares hogged the limelight during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Dec 20, 2004) on good buying support from foreign funds as well as operators.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened higher at 6360.11 as against last Friday's (Dec 17, 2004) close of 6346.48 and moved up further to a high of 6379.22 before being quoted at 6378.99 at 10.45 am, up by 32.51 points.

Rise in Index of Industrial Production (IIP) by a huge of 10.1 per cent in October, the highest rise in last seven years, influenced the investors fraternity to go on buying spree, dealers said.

Banking stocks once again attracted renewed buying interest at their lucrative price levels.

Among index-based shares, BHEL, Cipla, Dr Reddy, Grasim, HDFC Bank, Hero Honda, ICICI Bank, Infosys, ITC, LNT, REL, RIL, Tisco and Zee Telefilms were quoted remarkably higher on good buying.

ING Vysya bank was quoted higher by 11.92 per cent, India Cement by 5.11 per cent, Federal Bank by 5.05 per cent, Merck by 4.60 per cent and Indusind bank by 4.44 per cent while Shipping Corpn was down by 3.17 per cent, GESCO by 2.46 per cent, TVS Motor by 2.41 per cent, Tata Chem by 1.58 per cent and P&G by 1.50 per cent.