New Delhi: A legislation to provide greater autonomy and flexibility to private trusts to invest their money in securities was introduced in the Lok Sabha today.

The Indian Trusts (Amendment) Bill 2009, which was introduced by Minister of State for Finance P K Bansal, also empowers the government to notify a class of securities in which money belonging to private trusts could be invested.

The bill aims to do away with the requirement of case to case approval by the government of any security, according to its Statement of Objects and Reasons.

The provisions would provide the trustees “greater autonomy and flexibility to take decisions on investment of trust money based on their assessment of the risk return tradeoff,” it said.

“It would be consistent with the current economic environment and the present shift from a merit-based regulatory regime to a disclosure based regulatory regime,” the statement said, adding that the measure would also enable the government to notify a class of securities in which trust money could be invested.