NEW DELHI (AFP) -India’s booming economy drew a record 2.9 billion dollars in foreign direct investment in the first four months of the fiscal year, nearly double last year’s amount.

“FDI inflows in April-July 2006-07 increased by 92 percent to 2.9 billion dollars from 1.5 billion dollars in the same period of the last fiscal year,” Commerce Minister Kamal Nath told reporters, according to the Press Trust of India.

“India is set to recieve 12 billion dollars this year as against 8.3 billion dollars in 2005-06,” Nath said in New Delhi.

For July, FDI inflows increased by a record 259 percent to 1.16 billion dollars compared with 324 million dollars in the same month a year earlier, Nath said. This total did not include reinvested earnings.

Foreign investors have been lured by India’s strong economic growth.

The economy expanded by 8.9 percent in the first quarter to June after growing by 8.4 percent in the financial year ended March 31, 2006.

Nath said India had received 50.1 billion dollars in FDI since 1991 when the country began liberalising the economy. Of this, 16 billion dollars has come since April 2004.

The figures included both new investment and reinvested earnings, he added.