Mumbai, Aug 5 (IANS): India's largest insurance company Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) purchased stocks worth Rs 17,000 crore in the June Quarter.

LIC is one of the biggest institutional investors in the Indian stock market.

Apart from LIC, in the April-June period, mutual funds bought equity worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore, insurance companies and banks made net purchases of equity worth Rs 5,035 crore and Rs 628 crore respectively and retail investors bought equity worth Rs 39,278 crore. However, foreign investors sold equity worth Rs 8,495 crore during this period.

Earlier, shares worth Rs 44,500 crore and Rs 6,260 crore were purchased by LIC in the January-March quarter and October-December quarter respectively.

According to the data, LIC added 11 new shares to its portfolio in the June quarter and increased its stake in the existing 89 shares.

At the end of the June quarter, LIC had 321 shares in its portfolio. Their combined value was Rs 15.71 lakh crore. At the end of the March quarter, LIC had 333 companies in its portfolio, whose value was about Rs 14.29 lakh crore.

In the April- June period, LIC increased most of its stakes in companies like Infosys, LTI Mindtree, L&T, Asian Paints, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank and Oil India. The insurance giant reduced most of its stake in stocks like Tata Power, Siemens, Hindalco, Bharti Airtel, HeroMotoCorp and HDFC AMC.

LIC added REC, Dalmia Bharat, Poonawala Fincorp, India Tourism Development, Texmaco Rail & Engineering Limited and other companies to the portfolio for the first time.

The Indian Stock market has been in an uptrend for the last few months. National Stock Exchange (NSE) benchmark Nifty surged over 10 per cent and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) benchmark Sensex raised nearly 10 per cent so far this year.