Govt needs to make legislative amendments to strengthen credit

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) wants to strengthen the credit bureaus, but to do that the government has to make some legislative amendments, a top central bank official said today.

Delivering the key note address at the national banking summit organised by IBA and Ficci, RBI deputy governor NS Vishwanathan said there is a need to strengthen the credit bureaus but to do that some legislative amendments are needed.

"We have several measures in that direction (strengthening credit bureaus). Some of these are in terms of expanding the database....database that credit bureaus require, certain legal amendments and that is a work in progress," he said without elaborating on the same.

It can be noted that telecom companies and power utilities have been demanding that their customers' payment history be shared with credit bureaus saying the definition of default has to be extended beyond the domain of pure financial sector alone.