Chidambaram meets RBI, Sebi officials

Mumbai: Finance minister P Chidambaram today held a meeting with Reserve Bank officials, including Governor D Subbarao, as part of a series of engagements planned for the day with the central bank, market regular Sebi and foreign investors to revive the economy.

The Finance Minister was accompanied by Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram, Banking Secretary DK Mittal and Joint Secretary Anup Wadhwan, who is in charge of capital markets at North Block. Chidambaram is visiting the financial capital for the first time after taking over as Finance Minister on August 1 and it comes ahead of Central Bank's half-yearly credit policy review on October 30.

The meetings come on the heels of a raft of reforms in the past three weeks which included liberalisation of the FDI policy in a host of sectors like retail, aviation, insurance, and pension, apart from setting up the Parthasarathi Shome panel to review the contentious Gaar provisions.

After the meeting with RBI, Chidambaram drove to the Sebi Bhawan where he is slated to chair a meeting of its board.

After his meeting with the market watchdog, the Minister will engage with the heads of the stock exchanges and the leaders of the mutual fund industry under the banner of the industry body Amfi at the Sebi headquarters.

He will wrap up his visit with a meeting with leading foreign institutional investors in the evening.

The meeting with FIIs assumes importance in the light of the government decision to defer the implementation of the retro-tax proposal under the general anti-avoidance rules (Gaar) that had raised concerns in the markets and industry alike.

The Sebi meeting comes a day after a massive 15.5 per cent crash of the Nifty last morning due to an erroneous sell order placed by a trader at the brokerage Emkay Global which is being inquired into by the market watchdog.