Indian financial institutions will not succumb to global turmoil and the country is on track to grow about 8 percent a year, India's Finance Minister said Thursday. “All our financial institutions are on sound foundation,” Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi. The nation's insurance and banking regulators have, he said, “assured me that there is no reason for apprehension.” However, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex Thursday plunged below the 13k level and lost nearly 705 points in early trading on massive selling by funds, before recovering and closed 52.70 points at 13,315.60. The 30-share index, which had lost nearly 1,685 points in the last seven sessions, moved down by 704.76 points or 5.31 percent to 12,558.14, the lowest since July 16, after all the sectoral indices dropped between 2 to 8 per cent with realty, metals and capital goods suffering the most. Similarly, the National Stock Exchange's index Nifty breached the 3,800 mark and was quoted at 3,799.55, down by 208.70 points. Stock brokers said sliding global markets on concern that more companies could succumb to the financial crisis that has already claimed Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch badly dampened the trading sentiments here. They said sentiments on the global bourses were so weak that even bailing out of insurance giant AIG by the US Federal Reserve failed to quell concerns about the financial crisis. All the BSE-30 stocks were in the negative territory with steep losses, dragging the Sensex down.
