India’s fundamentals strong, market crash due to FII pull-out: FM

New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) The Indian government today asserted that the country’s growth and fundamentals are strong and attributed the bloodbath in the stock markets to global factors. "India's growth fundamentals are strong and they look more attractive in a world (which is) confronting problems," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, adding that FII investments have been in the positive territory in October and November. Mukherjee's statement comes in the backdrop of a sharp decline in Indian stock markets. The BSE benchmark Sensex today crashed 587 points in intra-day trade, before recovering to close 365 points lower at 15,699.97. Earlier in the day, he had said that continuous withdrawal of funds by foreign investors and depreciation of the rupee are the major factors for crash of stock markets. "Markets have crashed because of continuous withdrawal of (funds by) FIIs. There is still uncertainty prevailing in the Eurozone. Rupee depreciation also has adverse impact. All these cumulative effects are there," he said. In the past six trading sessions, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have withdrawn USD 623 million from the equity markets. During October and till November 22, FIIs have invested USD 634 million and USD 214 million, respectively. However, the FIIs today pulled out over USD 160 million from stock markets. Referring to the decline in the value of rupee, he said, "RBI (the country’s central bank) is closely monitoring the situation and will do the needful as required." Value of the Indian Rupee had touched an all-time low of 52.73 against the US Dollar yesterday, but recovered today to trade around 52.12 per dollar. Mukherjee further said that the overseas markets declined on concerns over US third quarter growth and high yields on Spanish bonds. Most of the overseas indices were in the red today as concerns over the health of the global economy, and downward revision of the US growth rate in the third quarter of 2011. He said that in India, day ahead of the expiry of the November contract, trading remained choppy. The wide-based National Stock Exchange's barometer Nifty closed 2.2 per cent down at 4,706.45 points. PTI