Investor awareness drives must focus on quality: Sebi chief

U K Sinha says 'just completing' numbers not good enough to address needs of investors

Investor awareness programmes should focus on quality to address their needs rather than "just completing" numbers, Sebi chairman U K Sinha said today.

Noting that attention on investor services have gone up substantially in the last three years, Sinha said this was not an area of great importance for the exchanges earlier.

Emphasising that there should be quality programmes to spread awareness among investors, the Sebi chief said "just completing" numbers would not be good enough to address the needs of investors.

He was speaking to reporters after inaugurating the new investor service centre of leading bourse BSE here.

"I also find that the sensitivity towards compliance and grievances made by investors have improved quite a bit... Now the time has come for us to also look at the quality of these programmes to evaluate their impact," Sinha said.

According to him, more people have started coming into the capital market and trading volumes have increased even though the latter has not reached 2008 levels.

Stating that the aim is to ensure a well regulated market for investors, Sinha said certain measures initiated by India in the capital market are still to be introduced in many developed nations, including the US.

He cited strict norms for related party transactions, among others, as examples.

The Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) chief also drew attention to the fact that the World Bank ranked the country better in terms of shareholders' protection in the latest annual Doing Business Report.

India was ranked 7th for minority investor protection - ahead of developed countries like the US, Japan, France and Germany.

The country's overall ranking stood at 142 among the 189 countries surveyed for the World Bank's latest "Ease of Doing Business" report released recently.