“Indian retail investors have played a key role, especially in the last two years. They have shown the world what they can do by standing up and becoming shock absorbers, unlike foreign portfolio investors (FPIs),” said Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, praising the country’s retail investors for their unwavering faith in the market. Sitharaman was speaking at the Silver Jubilee Celebration of National Securities Depository Limited, India’s largest depository (NSDL).
“From an average of 4 lakh new demat accounts opened every month in 2019-20, it tripled to 12 lakh per month in 2020-21 and has further increased to around 26 lakh per month in 2021-22,” the minister said, thanking the retail investors.
Sitharaman also launched ‘Market ka Eklavya,’ an online investor awareness programme for students in Hindi and other regional languages. She also suggested that the NSDL make the initiative global by introducing the programme in world languages.
Chairperson, SEBI, Madhabi Puri Buch unveiled NSDL’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchain platform for debenture covenant monitoring. “This day will be remembered as an important day as we are taking the first step in terms of the use of DLT in the markets,” the Chairperson said. Aimed at ensuring total transparency, the DLT blockchain is to bring issuers and debenture trustees on a common ground to record asset charges as well as monitor the asset cover ratio and various covenants of the issuance, and transparency in the debenture market.
