The Securities and Exchange Board of India has said the equity market should not be considered as a market of speculators.
“Don’t treat the capital market as a market of speculators,” the SEBI Chairman, Mr U.K. Sinha, said at a conference today.
Stressing on the importance of removing bottlenecks from the system, Mr Sinha said that procedures must be simplified to increase retail participation.
“If you look at the IPO process, the prospectus is huge, and in fine print. We will simplify the IPO form. The group has started working and it won’t take too much time,” he said.
He said that the retail participation accounts for 8 per cent of the total funds in the equity market, while in China, South Korea and Brazil, participation from the retail side is 20-30 per cent.
Mr Sinha added that the regulator has become tech-savvy and is in the process of setting up a world-class facility for surveillance of activities in the capital market.
He said that savings money has to be converted into investment for the economy to grow in a fruitful manner.
He added that pension fund amount should be allowed to be invested in equities. It would help the capital market get 1.5 per cent more funds if 15 per cent of the pension fund money is invested in the capital market.