27th Conference of the State Finance Secretaries

The 27th Conference of the State Finance Secretaries was held at Mumbai. Chief Secretaries of 15 states and finance secretaries of 27 states and 9 Union Territories participated in the conference which was inaugurated by Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India.  Shri U.K. Sinha, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) also addressed the conference. Shri Harun. R. Khan, Shri R. Gandhi and Shri S.S. Mundra, Deputy Governors, senior officials of the Ministry of Finance, Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), Planning Commission, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) and Executive Directors / other senior officers of the Reserve Bank and SEBI attended the conference.

Addressing the conference, Governor Dr. Rajan, highlighted the challenges faced by the country last year in tackling the serious issues relating to Current Account Deficit (CAD), growth slowdown, fiscal consolidation and inflation management and steps taken to restore confidence in the macro economy of the country. The Governor referred to the decline in financial savings and consequential challenges to debt management when growth and private sector credit would pick up. He cautioned against debt waiver schemes announced by State Governments pointing out at their adverse impact on the financial health of the banks whose capital needs have gone up due to enhanced prudential requirements and deterioration in asset quality and the macro economy in general. The Governor emphasised the need to strengthen the State Level Coordination Committees (SLCC) by ensuring participation at the higher level, conducting meetings at more frequent intervals and ensuring and sharing of quality information among all the stakeholders including the state government agencies, RBI, SEBI and MCA. “SLCCs should focus on financial inclusion for flow of public savings to the formal channels and protection of deposits of public mopped up by unauthorised and unscrupulous entities”, he concluded.

Addressing the conference, Shri U K Sinha, Chairman, SEBI, informed the gathering about some recent changes in the SEBI Act to control unauthorised deposit schemes. He sought cooperation of the State Governments in this initiative by conducting concerted investor awareness programmes and imparting training to the officials. He suggested that States should enact depositors’ investor protection act and strengthen the enforcement mechanism. He further sought co-operation of the State Governments in curbing “dabba trading”.

Chief Secretaries and Finance Secretaries shared their experience and made valuable suggestions in improving the co-ordination mechanism for sharing and acting on information on unauthorised deposit taking activities under different garbs. It was also suggested that for sharing the developments and best practices and information on dubious entities, a dedicated website for SLCC members may be created.

Earlier, welcoming the participants, Shri Harun R. Khan, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank focussed on channelising financial savings with the formal financial system like bank deposits, equity, fixed income securities and insurance products for efficient financial intermediation. He stressed that more concerted and coordinated measures would be needed by the State Government along with the national regulators to prevent flow of peoples’ savings into unauthorised, illegal and unviable schemes by dubious entities. He also highlighted the need for maintaining the fiscal correction path adopted by the States for reducing GFD/GDP and Debt/GDP ratios for their benefit and the benefit of the macro economy.

The conference, among other things, discussed setting up of an Advisory Committee on revision of ways and means advances to the states; projecting of market borrowings of the State Governments for 2014-15; trends and issues in State finances, valuation of State Development Loans (SDLs), increasing spread for SDLs despite their sovereign character without any default history, investment of Consolidated Sinking Fund (CSF) and Guarantee redemption Fund (GRF) corpus and power sector reforms at the states. The Conference also focussed on e-banking for Government business, creation of an Implementation Task Force to bring uniformity and standardisation in procedures/data structure of e-receipts/payments in respect of state government transactions and establishment of an IT enabled integrated treasury portal. Issues related to strengthening the capabilities of the Business Correspondents, establishment of more brick and mortar bank branches and simplification of KYC norms for financial inclusion were also discussed. Drawing attention to the rampant incidence of unauthorised deposit collection in the recent past, it was suggested that public awareness campaigns against deposit mobilisation in different forms by unauthorised entities and fraudulent offers of large sums of prize money by fictitious mails/SMSes should be intensified besides strengthening the Economic Offence Wings (EOWs)/Cyber Cells and training of state officials.

The Reserve Bank holds the conference of State finance secretaries every year to discuss and arrive at pragmatic solutions to the problems relating to State finances including raising of SDL, cash management, risk assessment of contingent liabilities, fiscal consolidation at the level of states, electronic mode of receipts and payments and other banking related aspects of the State government transactions, financial inclusion, mechanics of central government’s transfers to States, and other related issues of interest to them, Central Government and the Reserve Bank of India. This year’s conference was special in terms of participation of the Chief Secretaries of State Governments in view of increasing focus on role of states in curbing the activities of unauthorised entities amassing deposits from gullible public.

Alpana Killawala

Principal Chief General Manager