Mumbai: The Sensex opened past 5700-level and later rallied sharply during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Oct 4, 2004), driven by sustained purchases by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened on a strong footing at 5706.32 as against last Friday's close of 5675.54 and later spurted sharply to a high of 5759.45 before being quoted at 5757.70 at 10.30 am, up by 82.24 points.

FIIs which reported net investments of Rs 692 crore in the initial four sessions of the last week, were believed to be heavy buyers in select blue chip counters, brokers said.

The market seemed to be influenced by the unexpected 7.4 per cent growth in the GDP in the first quarter of the fiscal and marginal decline in the inflation as well as anticipation of encouraging quarterly results.

The market has completely set aside worries over the implementation of the turnover tax that came into effect from October 1.

Blue chip counters including RIL, Wipro, Tata Steel, Tata Motors, SBI, Satyam Computers, ONGC, Maruti Udyog, L&T, ITC, HPCL, HDFC, Grasim, GACL, Dr Reddy's Lab, BHEL, Bajaj Auto and ACC were quoted remarkably higher.