The Finance Ministry will meet representatives of stock exchanges here on February 7. This meeting assumes significance as it comes weeks before general Budget for 2012-13 is to be presented.

Indications are that the meeting will discuss the status of recent capital market reform initiatives like allowing foreign individual investors to directly invest in Indian equities. The Finance Ministry has been getting lot of “serious enquiries” on the qualified foreign investor scheme from countries such as Poland, United Arab Emirates, a senior official said. A few royal families have also evinced interest in this new scheme, which was unveiled earlier this month.

Meanwhile, speculation is rife that the capital market division in the Finance Ministry will once again take serious effort to rationalise securities transaction tax in the upcoming budget. Its earlier attempt late last year met with stiff resistance from the revenue department.

The stock exchanges have been making a case for abolition of securities transaction tax. They contend that such a move would help boost secondary market activity in equities.

Market is abuzz with rumours that upcoming budget may also see government imposing transaction tax on trades in commodities exchanges.

In the recent months, the Finance Ministry had several rounds of discussions with stock exchanges, in a bid to improve liquidity and further develop capital markets.

However, there has been very little movement on the issue of implementation of Bimal Jalan committee report on stock exchanges. This has led to a market talk that Government and the capital market regulator may have shelved the report for now.

>krsrivats@thehindu.co.in

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