Capital Market Fundraising to Surge 21% in FY25: Sebi Chief

Mumbai, Jan 10 (PTI) Overall fundraising from capital markets, including through equity and debt instruments, is estimated to jump by nearly 21 per cent to Rs 14.27 lakh crore in FY25 from the Rs 11.8 lakh crore in FY24, Sebi chief Madhabi Puri Buch said on Friday.

Buch said in the past nine months of the current fiscal, entities have mobilised Rs 3.3 lakh crore in equity and Rs 7.3 lakh crore from the debt markets, with the overall mop-up reaching Rs 10.7 lakh crore.

"If we project for the next quarter (Q4), we will probably end somewhere like over Rs 14 lakh crore raised for the year in terms of capital, both equity and debt," Buch said addressing a NISM-organised conference here.

A presentation made by Buch pegged the FY25 estimate at Rs 14.27 lakh crore.

Buch said money raised by real estate investments trusts, infrastructure investment trusts and municipal bonds has a very small contribution to the overall capital raising at around Rs 10,000 crore in the first nine months of FY25, but added that she sees the activity growing over the next decade to even exceed the money raised from equity and debt markets.

The capital markets regulator is working towards expediting the time taken for clearing issuances, Buch said, committing to reduce the time taken for clearing small and medium enterprises (SME) board proposals.

She said Sebi is taking up to 3 months for such SME issuances, while the banks are giving in-principle approvals in 15 minutes, and added that it will like to use more of tech tools to advance the issuances.

Buch said a lot of attention is paid to IPOs and Sebi is "flooded" with new applications on the same, but added that other avenues including preferential issuances, institutional placements and rights issues are also important and may go unnoticed.

She added that the regulator has come up with a system for expediting rights issuances, and hoped that the industry adopts the same.

Pointing out that the regulator has been clearing mutual funds' new offers much faster, the Sebi chairperson said systematic investment plans (SIP) with a minimum amount of Rs 250 will be launched shortly.

She appreciated the resource mobilisation done by domestic institutional investors over the last few years, and added that this money has helped in times of volatilities which may see a pull-out by foreign portfolio investors.

Buch said Sebi gets flak from some quarters on moving too fast on various aspects, but added that the pace is necessary if we were to meet our aspirations on the development front.