Technical glitch on NDS-OM holds up trade in govt bonds for over one hour

According to bond traders, the RBI's NDS-OM platform suffered technical issues between 9:05 am and 10:08 am IST, which led to trade almost coming to a halt during that period

A technical glitch in the Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL) caused volumes in the country's government bond market to dry up in the initial hours of business on Wednesday.

According to bond traders, the Reserve Bank of India's Negotiated Dealing System-Order Matching (NDS-OM) platform suffered technical issues between 9:05 am and 10:08 am IST, which led to trade almost coming to a halt during that period. The CCIL manages the NDS-OM platform.

"There was a technical issue on NDS-OM. There were very few trades that occurred for about an hour right after the market opened (at 9:00 am)," Naveen Singh, head of trading at ICICI Securities Primary Dealership, said.

While several market participants resumed trade after 10:08 am, some still faced issues, bond traders said. Officials from the CCIL declined to comment on the matter as they were not authorised to speak to the press.

Bond market sources said that clarity on the exact details of the glitch would emerge after the logs for the day's trade would have been gathered by the CCIL.

The sources said that it would need to be ascertained whether the glitch had been caused by an application or a network issue that may pertain to the Infinity network, which runs the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and certain other banking applications.

"Basically traders who had logged in before 9:05 am were fine, but the problem emerged for those who logged in after that time," a market source said.

"The problem carried on till around 10:08 am and then began to be resolved," the source said.

At 12:18 am, the total trade volumes on the NDS-OM were at Rs 4,860 crore. The total trade volumes on Tuesday were at Rs 34,908.60 crore, CCIL data showed. Bond trading ends at 3:30 pm IST.

The CCIL receives trades in securities issued by the central and state governments as well as treasury bills. Sovereign bonds are the benchmarks for pricing other credit products in the economy, including debt issued by corporate entities.