Mumbai: The FII party continues on Dalal Street unabated, with net investment by Foreign Institutional Investors in stock markets surging past the 50-billion dollar milestone for the first time in the country's history.

Despite a brief lull in first half of this year, the grand total of FII investment in equities rose to an all-time high of 50.025 billion dollars (Rs 2,16,256.60 crore) on Friday, the latest data available with stock exchanges shows.

Add to this about Rs 5,500 crore (1.13 billion dollars) invested by FIIs in debts, and the total FII investment in the country since their entry here soars to over 51.13 billion dollars (Rs 2,21,800 crore), the SEBI data shows.

Foreign funds have been net buyers in all months this year accept in May, when the markets had plunged sharply, largely due to a sell-off by overseas investors.

Net FII inflow in equities has rose to 8.92 billion dollars (Rs 40,814 crore) so far this year, as against 10.7 billion dollars in the entire 2005.

In the last month alone, FIIs were net buyers of shares worth Rs 9,380 crore (about 2 billion dollars), which is their highest net inflow in a month this year and the second highest monthly investment ever.

FIIs were net sellers in stocks only on three days during the past month.

The highest ever one-month net investment by FIIs was made in December 2005 when they made net purchase of shares worth Rs 9,465 crore.

The total FII net investment in the country's stock market stood at 41.10 billion dollars at the end of last year.