Over the last 4-5 years, the GDP-to-savings ratio in India has been falling. What is the government doing on this front?
Jayant Sinha: The answer is a lot of things. We completely understand that it's very important to be able to increase the savings rate, because we need those domestic savings to propel India's economy forward. And for that, a whole host of things have been done. I'll just tick them off very quickly.
1) As the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India has said many times, we want to have real interest rates, so that people feel like they should put their money into financial assets.
2) Gold Monetization Scheme.
3) Increased allocation to tax-free bonds. We made those bonds available and lots and lots of money came into them very, very quickly.
4) Deepening the bond market so that there are more financial instruments available to people to put money into.
5) Unleashed a whole host of reforms as far as the capital market is concerned. For instance, we have streamlined the regulations and taxation associated with alternative investment funds so that you have a whole host of alternative investment categories you can invest in. We are working with the exchanges to see what else we can do in terms of investment products.
6) We are working on a universal KYC. So that if you open a bank account and you present your KYC, then that same KYC can be used for a demat account or for any other financial instrument that you may be interested in. We are looking at that as another way to bring retail investors into the financial world so that they can save in that fashion as opposed to through real assets.
