Mumbai: Sebi chief U.K. Sinha urged corporates to run their own pension funds for their non-EPFO category employees and invest funds in the equity market.
Addressing the CII’s 5th Capital Markets Summit in Mumbai, where speakers mentioned the need for pension and insurance funds to deepen the equity markets, Mr Sinha said “instead of making representations to the government and regulators, corporates should look at what they can do themselves.”
He suggested to corporates to run their own pension funds.
There is a provision in the Employees Pension Fund Organisation that those earning above Rs 15,000 are not covered under the EPFO. He said surely there are a huge number of employees drawing above that amount who corportes can bring under the non-EPFO category and 15 per cent of the amount can be invested in the stock market. “This is within the existing laws,” he said.
Mr Sinha asked corporates to change and prepare for the new corporate governance norms.
He said Sebi is adopting measures to ensure that information filed within the Sebi system can be extracted by different regulators as it would be adequate compliance through Annual Information Memorandum.
This should be operational within three months, he said. In the case of KYC norms, he said that a one-time KYC across financial sectors should be possible. It can be integrated with the co-operation of all other financial sector regulators.
Mr Sinha said that Sebi would soon announce revised ESOP guidelines that would resolve existing anomalies. He also mentioned that minimum public shareholding norms would be made neutral vis-a-vis ownership.
