Uti Open To Common Act

The Unit Trust of India has said that it is open to any discussion on bringing all mutual funds under one common Act. According to top level UTI sources, the new government has to take a view on the matter if the Securities and Exchange Board of India puts up the proposal. We have to wait to till the new government comes to power. A final decision has to be taken by the government, a UTI source commented. The implication of the Sebi move will be on UTI as it is not completely under the purview of Sebi. It is expected to spark off the debate once again.

Meanwhile, PTI quoted D R Mehta, Sebi chairman, as saying that internal discussion among Sebi officials is being undertaken for a separate Act for mutual funds before recommending to the goverment.

The advantage of new Act will be to provide more powers to the market regulator and greater trasparency in information to the investors, mehta said addressing a seminar on mutual funds organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

We will try to bring the countrys largest mutual fund Unit Trust of India (UTI) also under the new Act, Mehta added.

Presently mutual funds are regulated under the Sebi Act, 1992 and UTI by a separate UTI Act.

However, Mehta said the final decision on the new Mutual Fund Act would entirely depend on the government.

The Sebi chairman said this month Sebi will be coming out with new guidelines for mutual funds offer documents.

Under the new guidelines offer documents mutual funds would be standardised like in the case of public issue of equity shares.