A one-stop regulator - Business Line
A one-stop regulator - Business Line
The ‘idea’ of UFA mooted by FSLRC doesn’t just sound utopean. It is utopean. The environment that the Financial Sector Legislative Reform Commission envisages for India’s regulatory landscape, to say the least smacks of copying the ‘Mall culture’ which is being developed for groceries, cosmetics and clothes to products in the financial sector. Prima facie, nothing illegal. But the Commission should have listened to the sane voices from within, which have partly surfaced as dissenting notes when it finalized the report. Four dissenting notes in a report signed by seven including the Chairman and the Secretary (it would have been embarrassing for these two to dissent!).
The idea of creating a Unified Financial Agency for all financial regulators except RBI, truncating RBI by separating Public debt Management and keeping the agency doing that work (presumably with the same work force) in RBI premises, later UFA subsuming even RBI all give a feeling that the FSLRC was not allowed to ‘apply its mind’ and in the eagerness to satisfy all, and so fast, it has forgotten its own brief. Perhaps the purpose would be served better, if RBI is allowed to function with its present mandates, a coordination committee sorts out issues among the remaining regulators and if GOI aim is to reduce the number of regulators, merge with RBI, the agencies outside RBI one by one, as work stabilizes. The twin goals of one Unified Financial Agency and managing the man-power-related issued mentioned here would be better achieved this way.
M G Warrier, Thiruvananthapuram
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