The Hindu Business Line : Survey on savings, investment behaviour on the anvil

The Finance Ministry plans to in the next two to three weeks place in the public domain a paper on `investment advisors' Non-availability of quality data reason behind the move

New Delhi June 21 Faced with lack of quality data on savings and investment decisions of Indians, the Finance Ministry plans to commission a nationwide first of its kind survey to assess the savings and investment behaviour in the country.

"We have already had one round of talks with the Central Statistical Organisation for such a survey," said Dr K.P. Krishnan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Finance, at the Financial Planning Congress 2007 here on Thursday.

He said that a pilot project would be taken up in 2008 and expressed hope that such a survey would be conducted every five years.

"We don't have quality and time-consistent data that could be of use to policymakers and also to companies designing products," he pointed out.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry plans to in the next two to three weeks place in the public domain a paper on `investment advisors'. "This paper would give a sense of the approach that the Finance Ministry and the regulators would take to regulate investment advisors," Dr Krishnan said.

Although the SEBI Act makes it clear that investment advisors need to be a regulated intermediary, there have been no regulations so far.

"It is a complex task. By definition, investment advisors cut across regulatory domains. They need not necessarily confine to a product. Given that we have strictly compartmentalised regulatory regime, how do we work this (regulate investment advisors) is a challenge," Dr Krishnan said.

The Finance Ministry is also in dialogue with the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (HRD) for introducing a module on `financial literacy' in the curriculum at school level.