Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], April 17 (ANI): Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s address at the 150-year celebrations of BSE had a message for all stakeholders of the financial markets, including the largest of all – the investors.
Finance Minister Sitharaman, in particular, urged investors to remain informed, patient, and confident in the long-term promise of disciplined wealth creation.
To the market intermediaries and exchanges, she called for innovation with purpose, but investor interest should always be at the centre.
“To our corporates — let transparency, sound governance, and commitment to shareholder value be your guiding principles. To our regulators — remain proactive, agile, and responsive in a world defined by rapid change,” the finance minister said.
Addressing the BSE event, she opined that to truly democratise investment, stock exchanges must continually innovate and design products that are accessible, understandable, and aligned with the risk appetite and savings behaviour of our citizens.
She told the exchange officials that the goal must be to make capital markets inclusive and rewarding for all strata of society.
Investor education increasingly becomes vital in a rapidly growing market with increasing retail participation, she said.
She suggested that Investor Awareness Programs (IAPs) in regional languages should be conducted across urban and rural areas, with a focus on students, senior citizens, women, rural investors, and first-time traders.
Speaking about the role of stock exchanges, she noted that they serve as more than just trading platforms, as they are a crucial part of the capital markets.
“As first-line regulators, the stock exchanges carry a profound responsibility. At the same time, they need to balance the cost of compliance with such regulations and enable innovations and informed risk-taking,” she supplemented.
She also briefly spoke about the growth in Indian financial markets.
Through reforms such as De-materialisation, T+1 settlement, direct market access, and mutual fund penetration, Sitharaman stated that India has established one of the most robust market infrastructures in the world.
In 2024-25, capitalisation of India’s stock markets crossed the USD 5 trillion mark for the first time, making India the fifth-largest capital market globally.
Over the years, the number of companies with a stock market capitalisation of over Rs 1 lakh crore has increased steadily, rising from 1 in 2000 to 30 just before the pandemic, and then rising sharply to 81 today.
Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) have played an increasingly central role.
In the last financial year, DIIs recorded total inflows of Rs 6.1 lakh crore, far outpacing the Rs 1.3 lakh crore net outflows from FPIs.
“This transition of DIIs from a supportive to a dominant force underlines the growing maturity and depth of India’s capital markets,” she noted.
Over the past five years, the number of domestic IPOs surged threefold–from 106 to 320–culminating in record equity issuances of Rs 4.2 lakh crore in 2024-25, twice the amount raised in the previous year.
The median age of Indian investors is 32 years, with over 40 per cent of them under the age of 30. Additionally, one in four investors today is a woman, she informed the gathering. (ANI)
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