Chidambaram to launch RGESS today

New Delhi: Finance minister P. Chidambaram will launch the much-awaited Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme (RGESS) in Mumbai on Saturday, a move likely to encourage new investors to put their money in the stock market.

“Chidambaram will formally launch the Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme in Mumbai tomorrow,” sources said.

The scheme, which was announced in the Budget for 2012-13, seeks to provide tax benefits to first-time investors in stock market. Under the scheme, an individual with an income of less than Rs10 lakh would get tax incentives for investing up to Rs50,000 in the stock market.

As per the notification issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on RGESS, there would be a lock-in period of one year on investments made under the scheme.

Besides, Chidambaram will also inaugurate the equity trading platform of MCX-Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) tomorrow. However, the exchange would commence live trading in equities from 11 February .

MCX-SX is providing trading platform for currency derivatives segment at present and would become a full-fledged stock exchange after the launch of other segments like equity, equity derivatives, bonds and interest rate derivatives.

The finance minister is also likely to meet heads of top 30 non-bank financial companies and discuss with them issues related to infrastructure financing, rising non-performing assets along with grant of banking licences to new players by the Reserve Bank, sources said.

RBI is likely to issue final guidelines for grant of banking licences to new players by the end of February.

A number of large corporate houses, including Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, financial conglomerates Religare and Shriram groups, engineering-to-technology major L&T group and Aditya Birla group, are said to be interested in entering the banking business depending on the regulatory framework.