Manmohan Singh's reassurance boosts Sensex by 645 points at midsession

Mumbai, Sept 19 : The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) benchmark Sensex surged by 645 points at midsession on Friday following reassurance from Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram that the Indian economy will remain unaffected from the global financial crisis.

Sensex, the 30-share index, which remained under selling pressure on weak global cues, spurted by 644.98 points to 13,960.58 at 12:45 P.M. on heavy buying by funds.

Dr. Singh's statement that there will be no impact of US crisis on the Indian economy boosted investor's confidence, according to reports.

Meanwhile, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) index Nifty spurted by 174.75 points at 4,212.90 at the same time as heavy-weight stocks led by Reliance Industries and some leading banking stocks recorded handsome gains.

The seismic shift on Wall Street this week has triggered a flight of foreign funds from Indian shares. Withdrawals in September have reached 1.3 billion dollar, taking the outflow to 8.7 billion dollar in 2008.

The financial crisis that has already claimed Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch badly dampened the trading sentiments.

The sentiments on the global bourses are so weak that even bailing out of insurance giant American Insurance Group (AIG) by the US Federal Reserve failed to quell concerns about the financial crisis.

ANI