India INX plans to offer more products to investors; seeks Sebi's approval to list REITs, InvITs

New Delhi, Jun 21 (PTI) With an aim to offer more products and services to investors, the BSE-promoted India International Exchange (India INX) on Sunday said it has sought Sebi's approval for listing emerging investment vehicles -- REITs and InvITs -- and GDR on its platform.

With an aim to offer more products and services to investors, the BSE-promoted India International Exchange (India INX) on Sunday said it has sought Sebi's approval for listing emerging investment vehicles -- REITs and InvITs -- and GDR on its platform. Currently, equity and commodity derivatives are traded on the exchange. It launched a rupee-dollar futures and options contract in May to enable participants to hedge, trade, and settle in the dollar.

The launch of a rupee-dollar derivatives contract is expected to bring rupee trading home from other international financial centers. India INX, which commenced its trading activities in January 2017, is the country's first international exchange.

"We have sought Sebi's permission for a listing of global depository receipts (GDRs), real estate investment trusts (REITs) and infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs) at India INX," the exchange's managing director and CEO V Balasubramaniam told PTI over the phone. Apart from these, the exchange has approached the capital markets watchdog for a listing of mutual funds on India INX, he added.

This is part of the exchange's efforts to offer more innovative products and services to investors and market participants. The exchange currently provides only hedging services to investors, but it wants to provide more services and products, he said.

Balasubramaniam said the listing of REITs and InvITs on India INX will help the bourse in competing with other markets like Singapore, which is Asia's hub for REITs. With regard to GDRs, he said the listing of such instruments on India INX will help long-term investment products to be made available to investors across the world on Indian equity shares, which are underlying for GDRs.

The markets regulator had come out with guidelines for issuance of Depository Receipts (DRs) in October 2019, while a list of permissible jurisdictions and international exchanges where these DRs can be issued and traded was released in December 2019. India INX, which is located in International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at GIFT City, provides a competitive advantage in terms of tax structure and supportive regulatory framework that is comparable with any other global financial center.

These include a waiver of several taxes like security transaction tax, commodity transaction tax, dividend distribution tax, capital gains tax, and GST. Speaking about the government's decision to set up International Financial Services Centres Authority to regulate all financial services in IFSCs in Gandhinagar, he said a single-window regulatory institution would speed up the development of IFSC.

The unified authority would be headquartered in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Currently, banking, capital markets, and insurance sectors in IFSC are regulated by RBI, Securities, and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), and Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), respectively.