The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in order to encourage overseas funding has proposed the draft framework on External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) and placed it on its website for comments/feedback till October 1. ECB has implications for monetary stability as it adds to the country’s overall external debt and future repayment liability. RBI has stated that the basic objective of the extant External Commercial Borrowings (ECB) policy is to supplement domestic capital for creation of capital assets in the country, limited by considerations for capital account management. With this objective in view, the ECB regime has been progressively liberalised over the years, allowing different entities to raise ECB.
Elaborating further, it has said that within the overarching stance of calibrated approach to the capital account liberalisation, an attempt has now been made to replace the ECB policy with a more rational and liberal framework, keeping in view the evolving domestic as well as global macro-economic and financial conditions, challenges faced in external sector management and the experience gained so far in administering the ECB policy.
The draft framework on External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) has proposed to lower the all-in cost borrowing by 0.50 per cent to ensure that the funds are borrowed from abroad at a reasonable interest rate. According to the draft guidelines, there will only be a small negative list which include stock market operations, real estate activity and purchase of land. They will not be allowed to raise resources through ECBs and rupee denominated borrowing.
RBI has also proposed to expand the list of recognised ECB lenders by including overseas regulated financial entities, pension funds, insurance funds, sovereign wealth funds and similar other long-term investors. It also allowed Indian banks to act as ECB lenders subject to norms and proposed to cap the minimum maturity of ECB up to $50 million at 3 years and 5 years for amount exceeding $50 million. The minimum average maturity for long term ECB should be 10 years. The guidelines also proposed part pre-payment by existing borrower by raising fresh ECBs.
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