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Chandrashekhar panel to frame rules for foreign investors: Sebi

The market regulator Sebi on Wednesday said it has appointed a committee under ex-cabinet secretary K M Chandrashekhar to frame a single set of guidelines for all types of foreign investors.

The committee will suggest ways to simplify the investment process for all overseas entities like foreign institutional investors, foreign venture capital investors (FVCIs), qualified financial/ institutional investors (QFIs), and NRIs, among others, and also to strengthen surveillance over them. 'Why should we have various routes for foreign investment? Why should we have sub-accounts, ODIs, FIIs and QFIs and NRIs and all that? In consultation with government, we have decided to combine these various routes which are present today into one single route.

'And three-four days ago, we set up a committee under former cabinet secretary K M Chandrashekhar to look into this,' Sebi chairman U K Sinha told reporters here on the sidelines of a capital markets summit organised by industry body CII.

However, he did not share more details like when the committee will submit its report and who are the other members of the panel.

It can be noted that at the last Sebi board meeting held on 6 October, it had said that it was looking for ways to streamline foreign investment norms for various categories of investors. 'With a view to rationalise/harmonise different routes for foreign portfolio investments, Sebi will prepare draft guidelines based on the guidance of the working group on foreign investments, for consideration of the government so that uniform guidelines are made for various categories of investors such as FIIs, FVCIs, NRIs etc,' Sebi had said in a statement after the board meeting.

Notably, FIIs are the largest players in the domestic market. So far this year, they have pumped in a whopping USD 21 billion into the domestic equities, making it the second best inflows after 2010, when they had pumped in close to USD 30 billion.
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