Monday, October 3 2005 11:25 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) today (Oct 03, 2005) opened strong and moved further upwards in scrip-specific activity during morning trading on sustained inflows from institutional investors.

The sensex opened firm at 8662.99 as against Friday's close of 8634.48 and later surged up to a high of 8711.04 on the back a selective price rally, before being quoted at 8696.57 at 10.30 am, up by 62.09 points over previous close.

The market is driven by consistent purchases by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) as also domestic mutual funds.

A strong growth of 8.1 per cent GDP growth during first quarter of this fiscal backed by a robust growth in industry and services sectors bolstered the uptrend.

Well supported by strong prospects of kharif production and reasonably buoyant performance by industrial and services sector, the economy is expected to register 7.3 per cent growth in 2005-06, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Domestic funds reported net purchases of Rs 566 crore in the first three days of last week while FIIs made net investments of Rs 402 crore in the initial four sessions in the last week.

Brokers said select heavyweighted counters attracted fresh buying interest at early stages.