SEBI Urges Pension Funds To Support Municipal Bonds, REITs And InvITs
With an aim to develop the corporate bond market, the Securities and Exchange Board of India on Friday urged pension funds and other long-term investors to support municipal bond issuances and start considering other assets such as real estate investment trusts and infrastructure investment trusts.
"I would like to urge pension funds and other insurers to start considering these assets (REITs and InvITs) in their portfolios as well. We see healthy requests from corporate wealth funds and pension funds but it needs to be complimented with our own domestic institutional participation," SEBI's Executive Director Pramod Rao said at the Assocham's National Summit and Awards Corporate Bond Market 2024.
Speaking about deepening India's corporate debt market, Rao said that the SEBI is continuously working on steps to develop the corporate bond market and said that there is a need to ease doing business, which will encourage issuers to tap the market.
With online bond platform providers gaining prominence, Rao said that they must retain investors' trust and behave responsibly. He expects volumes in repo transactions of corporate bonds to increase going forward.
On a similar note, the State Bank of India's Managing Director, Ashwini Kumar Tewari, said that the corporate bond market has a long way to go and hasn't found the answer as to how to support lower-rated issuances.
While there is a need for the bank loan market and the corporate bond market to go hand in hand until the bond market comes of age, Tewari expects the bond market to get bigger than that of bank loans.
With the government's rising thrust on infrastructure, Tewari said that the bond market will be a more viable option for financing long-term infrastructure projects compared to loans.
Additionally, Life Insurance Corporation of India's MD Doraiswamy said that he is keen on increasing corporate bond investments for infrastructure developments and is looking at investing in REITs and InVITs.
-
Talking Points This Week: Tech Nerves, FII Buying, And A Faraway Banking Shock
The global markets are not shining this Diwali. The exception in the large markets is, India.
-
Midterm Rally Lasted A Day. The Hard Reality Of A Divided US May Last Two Years | Opinion
Between a contested AI boom, a debt ceiling that arrives in 2027 and a president with every incentive to act alone, the next two years may prove more volatile than the first day's rally suggests.
-
Blue Wave Will Derail the AI Trade but Won't Dismantle the AI Era | Unhedged Position
The Democrats' sweep of the US Congress will see politics collide with economic forces both over the long and short term.
-
It's Time To Take The GST Council's Bet On Trust Global
Payment records can prove India's services exports, and clear, proportionate rules can bring foreign digital sellers into the tax net.
-
Opinion | India at 38: From Innovation Overperformer to Innovation Powerhouse
India now has 453 VC-backed deep science startups, 18 of them late-stage, after 117 percent growth since 2020. Laurus Labs, at USD 9.3 billion, is the most valuable deep science company in any middle-income economy outside China.
-
Navigating Energy Crossroads: S Jaishankar's Call For Diversified Supply Chains At G20 Ministerial Meeting
As geopolitical fault lines continue to test maritime trade routes and commodity flows, Jaishankar's message remains pertinent: true economic resilience requires open markets, protected transit lines, and a genuine commitment to multilateral cooperation rather than coercion.
-
Indians Are Travelling, But Not Every Journey Is A Holiday | The Week In Whys
Pilgrims, patients and working women are the real travellers, and the system hasn't quite caught up with them.
-
Getting To Work Costs Women More | The Reason Why
It is not just about women paying more than men. It is about women paying much more in cities than in villages.
-
AI Bias In Investing Cannot Be Eliminated, But It Can Be Governed
Framing is a particularly important example as identical financial information presented in terms of gains rather than losses can lead an LLM to reach a different assessment.
