Indian central bank to open government bonds market for retail investors

India's central bank on Friday said it will soon issue guidelines to allow retail investors to open the gilt account in a move to deepen the bond market in the Asian country.

India will join a handful of countries where retail investors have direct access to government bonds, said Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das.

"As part of continuing efforts to increase retail participation in government securities and to improve ease of access, it has been decided to move beyond aggregator model and provide retail investors online access to the government securities market - both primary and secondary - along with the facility to open their gilt securities account with the RBI," the governor said.

He made the remark after the bank's monetary policy meeting that decided to keep policy rates unchanged while maintaining an accommodative stance in line with market expectations.

India has planned a gross borrowing of 165.4 billion U.S. dollars for the fiscal year 2021-22 running from April 2021 to the end of March 2022 as per the announced in the federal budget earlier this week.

Meanwhile, gross borrowing for the current fiscal year of 2020-21 has been revised to 175 billion U.S. dollars from the budget estimate of 106.6 billion U.S. dollars.