Bourses are not speculators' markets: Sebi chief

Capital market regulator Sebi today said the equity market should not be considered as a market of speculators.

"Don't treat the capital market as a market of speculators," Securities and Exchange Board of India [Sebi] Chairman UK Sinha said at a conference.

Stressing the importance of removing bottlenecks from the system, Sinha said that procedures must be simplified to increase retail participation.

"If you look at the IPO process, the prospectus are 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% of the total funds in the equity market, while in China, South Korea and Brazil, participation from the retail side was 20-30%.

Sinha added that the regulator had 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 amounts should be allowed to be invested in equities and would help the capital market get 1.5% more funds if 15% of the pension fund money was invested in the capital market.