Jaitley makes peace with RBI, ends worries of tax snooping

TENSION DOUSED FM drops plans for independent debt manager; RBI to regulate govt bonds for now

NEW DELHI: Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday rolled back the proposal to set up an independent public debt management agency, ending tensions with the central bank which will continue to be the sole regulator of government bonds, for now.

The government would consult the Reserve Bank of India and come up with a roadmap for the debt agency in line with global practices, Jaitley said, without offering any timeline.

“We have decided to delete the PDMA provisions from the finance bill for this financial year,” Jaitley told the Lok Sabha. He was initiating a debate on the finance bill, 2015.

I n his budget speech on February 28, the minister had proposed a PDMA to serve as the government’s investment banker and manage public borrowing.

The proposal — seen as the biggest overhaul of India’s money market operations — would have taken away for the RBI the regulation of a substantial part of the money market and shifted it to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

There were fears that empowering of Sebi would turn the capital market watchdog into a “super financial regulator”, given its control over the equities and commodities transactions.

“Since the RBI has been handling public debt management, the government in consultation with the RBI will prepare a detailed roadmap separating the debt management function and the market infrastructure f rom the RBI and having a unified f i nancial market,” Jaitley said.

The RBI acts as the government’s banker and that sometimes conflicts with its other major task — controlling inflation. As the banker, the RBI has to keep interest rates low but has a tough balancing act to do when prices rise as it has to keep lending rates high.

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