New Delhi: Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said the fall in stock market would not affect consumer demand, even as he attributed selling by FIIs partly to a meltdown in global markets.
"Our consumer demand is very huge and our growth is driven largely by domestic demand... Global markets are down and it is partly reflected on Indian markets also," he said.
The country's stock market benchmark index surrendered over 600 points at noon today due to a bout of selling by foreign funds.
To a question on net sale by FIIs for the last 11 days, he said overall foreign capital in India, including FDI, was positive.
"My information is that lot of foreign capital is moving to India and that includes FIIs... we will continue to attract FIIs. Also, we need to attract FDI, not to substitute FIIs, but in addition to FIIs," Chidambaram said.
Last year, he said FDI inflow into the country had surpassed that of the previous year and this year too, "we will attract more FDI because of many projects in infrastructure area."
Any hurdles in attracting FDI should be removed, he said.
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