The capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), on Saturday announced a string of measures aimed at boosting fund flow to equity markets amid indications that more such measures were coming.
Finance minister P Chidambaram, had a busy day with
separate brainstorming sessions with RBI governor D Subbarao and Sebi chief UK Sinha to discuss ways and means to keep the momentum going on the recent burst of bold reforms initiatives to reverse the slowdown.
Sebi allowed investors to maintain their investment records across various assets - bank FDs, insurance products, post office deposits - in a single digital (demat) statement.
This is seen as a precursor to eventually allow investors to avoid the lengthy process of filling up know-your-customer registration forms each time they buy a financial product or service.
Sebi hopes to do this through a common KYC registration that contains information about personal details, address, permanent account number and photographs, to name a few.
It also eased norms that would allow mutual funds to lend more to top-rated housing finance companies, allowing mortgage lenders access to more funds that can be passed on to realty companies and final home loan borrowers.
Sebi also proposed uniform guidelines for all classes of foreign investors; steps aimed at simplifying the investment process for overseas funds and also strengthening regulatory oversight over these class of investors.
This would imply that foreign institutional investors, non-resident Indians, foreign venture funds and qualified financial investors would be governed under a uniform set of guidelines.