MUMBAI: Bond markets need more depth and not just scale so that more enterprises can access market-based finance as the bank-led model will not be sufficient to meet future financing needs, RBI deputy governor Rohit Jain said. He emphasised that this will require more discerning investors to assess levels of risks.“A wider range of enterprises must also progressively gain access to market-based finance. This cannot be achieved merely by introducing new instruments or encouraging investors to assume more risk. It requires investors with the capacity to differentiate and price credit risk, reliable recovery mechanisms, and markets through which such risk can be managed and redistributed.,” Jain said.He was speaking at the Financial Institutions Leadership Conference organised by Standard Chartered Bank here last week. Jain said India’s push to become a developed economy by 2047 will depend on how financial markets address the challenge of long-term financing.“India’s economic ambitions require its financial markets to mobilise substantially more long-term capital and distribute risk more efficiently,” he said, adding that behind every one of these ambitions lies a financing question: where will the long-term capital come from, and how will the risks generated by a larger and more globally connected economy be managed?Jain also said that market size does not necessarily indicate efficiency.
