Thursday, June 30 2005 17:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Shrugging off the slowdown in GDP growth, the Sensex today (Jun 30, 2005) surged further by a whopping 73.97 points to climb at a new closing high of 7193.85 on the Bombay Stock Exchange driven up by sustained heavy buying by FIIs and short-covering by local funds.

Ahead of the expiry of the futures contract the benchmark attracted buying support from all quarters, as economic fundamentals took a back seat amidst the persistent hectic demand from foreign funds.

The BSE benchmark 30-share sensitive index opened firm at 7154.27 as against the previous close of 7119.88. Thereafter, it rallied further and after crossing the 7200 mark, touched an intra-day high of 7218.28, very close to the historic high of 7228.21 recorded on June 27.

Later, it eased on fresh profit selling in select counters, but closed at an all-time closing high of 7193.85, showing a steep rally of 1.04 per cent over the last close.

India's economic growth stood at 6.9 per cent for 2004-05, down from the previous year's level of 8.5 per cent.

FIIs had bought equities worth Rs 275 crore on Monday (Jun 27, 2005) and Rs 524 crore on Tuesday (Jun 28, 2005) and more than Rs 4500 crore in June so far, a brokers said.

TCS closed sharply higher on heavy buying following reports that the company and Microsoft have been selected as partners to form a joint venture (JV) company, dealers said.

The steep rally in ONGC, HDFC Bank, HDFC, ITC, Satyam, Bajaj Auto, BHEL and Infosys Tech lifted the Sensex steeply higher.

However, trendsetters RIL and REL met with fresh selling and closed marginally weak.