RBI rationalizes FII investment in bonds including G-Secs

02 Apr 2013 Evaluate

In a move to attract more foreign inflows to fund the widening current account deficit (CAD), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rationalized FII investment in bonds, including government securities (G-Secs) by doing away with various categories. The central bank in a notification said ‘to simplify the existing limits, it has now been decided to merge the existing debt limits into two broad categories.’

Among the two broad categories, the first category will consist of G-Secs of $25 billion which merges $10 billion for investment limit in short-term government papers, including treasury Bills, and $15 billion for long-term government papers. While, the second category consists of the corporate debt with a limit of $51 billion, including a sub-limit of $25 billion each for bonds of infrastructure sector and non-infrastructure sector, and $1 billion for Qualified Foreign Investors (QFIs) in non-infrastructure sector. The above changes will come into effect from April 1, 2013.

Meanwhile, the eligible investors for these two categories are FIIs, QFIs and long terms investors registered with SEBI-Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs), pension and insurance, multilateral agencies and central banks of other countries. For the G-Secs category, eligible investors may invest in treasury bills only up to $5.5 billion within the limit of $25 billion. In the other category, investors may invest in commercial papers only up to $3.5 billion within the limit of $51 billion. The Non-Resident Indians are not subject to any limit for investment in government securities as well as corporate debt and will continue to be regulated as per existing guidelines.

As per Finance Minister P Chidambaram, CAD can be financed only through foreign inflows. Hit by high gold and petrol imports and slowdown in exports, current account deficit widened to a record high of 6.7% in October-December period of 2012-13.

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