The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will soon unveil operating guidelines for a foreign exchange trading platform for retail participants, including individuals, exporters and importers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
As part of its ‘Statement on developmental and regulatory policies,’ the central bank said the proposed platform would provide transparency of pricing and promote competition among market-makers leading to better pricing for all customers, regardless of order size.
Further, the banking regulator said that the trading platform had been developed by the Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL) and is currently being tested by users and that the platform will be available to users for transactions from August.
The circular on the operational guidelines for the platform will be issued by the end of June, added an RBI statement.
Meanwhile, the central bank also aims to enhance the retail participation in auctions of State Development Loans (SDLs) by using the current platform of stock exchanges that allow retail participants to bid for government securities.
“It has been decided to also allow the specified stock exchanges to act as aggregators/facilitators to aggregate the bids of their stockbrokers/other retail participants and submit a single consolidated bid under the non-competitive segment of the primary auctions of State Development Loans (SDLs),” the banking regulator said.
Currently, the platform allows stock exchanges to aggregate the bids of stock brokers and other retail participants and submit a single consolidated bid under the non-competitive segment of the primary auctions of government securities.
According to RBI, the measure will be implemented in consultation with the respective State governments.
