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'US to back financial market reforms in India'

The United States on Thursday announced the beginning of US-backed second phase of assistance to financial markets reforms in India in a bid to strengthen the securities regulation and provide safety to the investors.

"US-sponsored technical assistance will be focussed on two initiatives that involves the Securities and Exchange Board of India directly," US Ambassador to India Robert D Blackwill said in a statement in New Delhi.

The USAID-funded Financial Institutions Reform and Expansion programme in Bombay, will restart its efforts to make Indian markets safer for investors and secondly, the involvement by the US Securities and Exchange Commission would advise Sebi on strengthening securities regulation.

In the first initiative, technical assistance would be provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants and advisors who would support a second generation of reforms in the Indian financial markets following previous work in the area in the 1990s.

This assistance would focus on strengthening the oversight and risk management capacity of the regulators and self-regulatory organisation, advancing disclosure standards and information dissemination, expanding investor education and supporting insurance and pension reforms.

The second initiative involved a new three-year agreement between SEC and Sebi, under which SEC would provide specialised technical assistance and training in specific areas of regulation to Sebi, Blackwill said.

Members of the SEC team are likely to arrive in Bombay and Delhi in the middle of this month, he added.

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