The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex today surged as much as 345 points during the intra-day trade.

The 30-share index, which opened firm at 13,837.64 points gained further strength and witnessed an intra-day high of 14,195.55 points as Chidambaram said economy would grow at a robust rate in FY'09.

He highlighted the record production figures of wheat, rice, pulses, oil seeds and coarse cereals terming the FY '08 as a watershed year for agriculture during the debate on the vote of Confidence Motion in Lok Sabha.

The bellwether index jumped as much as 345.51 points over its previous close of 13,850.04 points. It was trading at 14,138.25 at 11.26 am.

All the sectoral indices barring the auto index was trading in the positive zone.

The banking index surged 4 per cent, metal jumped 3.66 per cent, power 3.64 per cent, capital goods 2.84 per cent, and FMCG was up 2.68 per cent.