NSE rolls back 6% charge hike on equity and F&O trading from today

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has announced that it will roll back its recent 6% increase in transaction charges on the equity cash and derivatives segments of its platform. 

The rollback will take effect from April 1st, according to a statement released by the bourse on March 24th.

NSE increased its transaction charges by 6% in January 2021 to augment the investor corpus in response to market exigencies due to broker defaults.

The exchange in an official release noted, “NSE Board of Directors in its meeting held on March 23, 2023, decided to roll back the increase of 6% in transaction charges, in cash equities market segment and equity derivatives segment, with effect from April 1, 2023. The charges were earlier increased by 6%, with effect from January 1, 2021, partly to augment NSE Investor Protection Fund Trust (NSE IPFT) corpus in view of certain market exigencies due to broker defaults at that point in time."

“Further to systematically augment the corpus of NSE IPFT, it was also decided to recalibrate the contribution to NSE IPFT from ₹0.01 per crore to ₹10 per crore in Cash Equities Market Segment & Equity Futures and ₹0.01 per crore to ₹50 per crore in Equity Options,” it said.

However, this reduction was only partial because there was also a recalibration of contribution to NSE IPFT. As a result, the overall impact of these changes on transaction charges is estimated to be a reduction of around 4%.

The announcement comes at a time after the Finance Ministry raised the securities transaction tax (STT) on Futures and Options (F&O) contracts, which will come into effect from April 2023.