Investor education

This refers to ‘Safeguarding investors’ (March 21). Given the availability of numerous tech-savvy financial products and services, it is imperative to make investors, especially retail investors, well-informed about safeguards to be observed while they are in the financial market.

By and large, the level of technology-oriented financial literacy among retail investors is not adequate to analyse and understand the risks and reward intricacies involved in investing in the capital market. A lot of investors lack knowledge and skills about analysing the various financial statements, besides the operations of the listed companies and thus are prone to make wrong investment decisions.

As the market and banking regulators have the means and ways, they must provide the necessary infrastructure to ensure the conducting of awareness programmes on an ongoing basis.

VSK Pillai

Changanacherry, Kerala

Maharashtra’s solar push

Apropos ‘Maharashtra’s big agri-solar push’ (March 21), the State has done wonders by exploiting the key features of the ongoing PM-KUSUM along with their own agriculture scheme (MSKVY). Such a system ensures seamless availability of power supply for agriculture farms even during day-time which is not possible now at many places due to several operational constraints. Maharashtra has done really well in harnessing the abundant solar energy available for the benefit of the agricultural sector. This is a fit model for other States to replicate.

RV Baskaran

Chennai

Streamline procurement

Apropos ‘Poor procurement main reason for farmers’ crisis’ (March 21), even though MSPs are fixed on various crops, procurement happens in a skewed way and its benefit are not uniformly available to all farmers. This forces many of them to sell to private traders/mandis at prices well below the MSP. Private traders and mandi operators must be mandated to buy the produce at MSP countrywide.

NR Nagarajan

Sivakasi, TN

Instant settlement

The editorial ‘Unsettling idea’ (March 21) has succinctly discussed the proposal for shortening the stock exchange settlement cycle. The proposal for T+1 and ‘instant’ settlement will surely grab headlines globally. However, SEBI could also work towards greater investor protection.

Mutual fund units allotment often does not happen at same-day NAV though funds are transferred well before cut-off time. AMCs take cover under the provision that units will be allotted once the funds ‘become available for deployment’.

This is nebulous, opaque, one-sided and not verifiable by investor. This must go.

V Vijaykumar

Pune

Sustain capex

Developing economies like India need to incur capital expenditure on a sustained basis, as it will not only create productive assets in the economy, but will also enhance productive income in the hands of the people. Investment is well-defined in economics as ‘an addition to the stock of capital’. Little investment can create multiple income, according to John Maynard Keynes. It is absolutely true as the marginal propensity to consume (that is, ratio of change in consumption to change in income) is high in such economies and increase in investments should lead to increase in aggregate demand, employment, income and output.

S Ramakrishnasayee

Chennai

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