India wants strict oversight to curb recurrance of fiscal crisis

New Delhi, Oct 14 (UNI) An Indian parliamentary delegation has called for setting up of financial oversight structures to prevent recurrance of volatility and shocks being witnessed in the global financial markets.

Speaking at the 119th Inter-Parlaimentary Union (IPU) assembly in Geneva, Indian delegation led by Lok Sabha deputy speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal, underlined the need for Parliaments across the world to spell out "regulatory principles and norms to govern short-term global transfers of capital".

It urged IPU to set up a representative body of parlaimentarians to ensure compliance of such regulatory principles and norms by all member-countries, adding the exercise should be done on the basis of surveillance reports submitted by International Monetary Fund(IMF).

At the same time, the delegation wanted IMF to be even-handed in its approach while preparing surveillance reports.

Speaking for the delegation, Mr Abdul Rashid Shaheen, MP, said IPU should build up global opinion in ensuring that national and international commitments for funding development agenda like the millennium development goals and initiatives against climate change are not vitiated by global financial meltdown.

Expressing concern over the implications of the world financial crisis on the socio-economic agenda of developing countries like India, he criticised the IMF for fast-pacing privatisation without putting in place the right regulatory framework to keep a close watch on the process.

Mr Shaheen said banking crisis have had occured when financial marekts were liberalised but supervision and regulation were not upgraded to cope with the liberal agenda. There were serious gaps in prudential regulation and supervision of banks that allowed imprudent exposures or fraud to go undetected during the financial crisis of 1980s and 1990s, he added.

He drew attention of IPU to the conclusions made by the World Bank and IMF which said "there are serious problems with the Basel norms".

These norms were worked out at Basel in Switzerland to ensure regulations in the banking sector in the world.

UNI SAA AK KP1915