Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s promise to shortly reveal a path of fiscal consolidation to regain investor confidence kept the market tempo upbeat for the second week in a row.

Both the key indices, Sensex and Nifty, rose by over 2 per cent despite steep fall in heavyweights such as SBI and Bharti Airtel amid unexpected decline in industrial output.

Sustained buying by foreign funds also was the major factor for the market to remain firm.

Investors were enthused by comments made by Chidambaram before markets closed on Monday to unveil a broad roadmap to regain investor confidence and the government will work with the RBI to moderate inflation.

Brokers also said trading mood improved on global cues influenced by higher-than-forecast US jobs data at 163,000 for July that came out after Indian markets closed on August 3.

The BSE 30-share gauge resumed the week higher and improved further to an intra-trade at four-and-a-half-month high of 17,726.64 on Wednesday, level not seen since March 16, 2012 when it had logged a high of 17,871.00.

However, it could not sustain the gains due to a decline in country’s industrial production announced on Thursday and steep fall in telecom giant Bharti Airtel on dismal Q1 performance and also in SBI due to rise in non-performing assets (NPAs) respectively.

The Sensex later ended at 17,557.74, a net rise of 359.81 points, or 2.09 per cent. Last week, it had spurted by 358.74 points, or 2.13 per cent.

The broadbased NSE 50-issue Nifty also flared up by 104.70 points, or 2.01 per cent, to end the week at 5,320.40.

Country’s largest state-run bank, SBI, also tumbled on rise in non-performing assets (NPAs), despite more-than double increase in Q1 net profit.

Share values of the Bharti Airtel was the top loser from the Sensex pack with a fall of 13.73 per cent after its profit dropped 37 per cent in April-June quarter, the tenth decline in quarterly profit.

SBI was the second with a decline of 5.86 per cent, which restricted the rise in the Sensex, otherwise the gain would have been much more pronounced.

Auto, IT, metal, FMCG and refinery stocks were at the forefront while some of the consumer durable and realty stocks were down on profit-booking.

Buying was seen in some of the key frontline stocks such as M&M, Tata Motors, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki, TCS, Infosys, Sterlite Ind, Hindalco, Jindal Steel, HUL, ITC, RIL, GAIL, L&T, NTPC and Tata Power, while second-line stocks underperformed the Sensex, indicating lack of interest from retail investors as the current unstable scenario.

On Monday, heavyweight and petro-chem giant, RIL, notched up its best daily gain in three years — rising by nearly 6 per cent ahead of a meeting of an oversight panel to consider clearing annual investment plans for KG-D6.

Auto stocks led the rally on rise in sales in the month of July while IT stocks rose after US-listed Cognizant stood by its full-year revenue forecast.

However, on the last three days of the week, the market saw some selling on reports that foreign brokerages Citigroup and CLSA cut their GDP growth estimates to 5.4 and 5.5 per cent, respectively, and also Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday downgraded its outlook on Greece to negative from stable.

Index of Industrial production (IIP) declined 1.8 per cent in June, considerably weaker than market expectations of a gain of 0.4 per cent.

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