The National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development (NaBFID) should provide credit enhancements for civic bodies which will help increase investor interest in municipal bonds, a senior Sebi official said on Thursday.
The municipal bodies have an investment grade rating, but very few of them are rated AA and above which is considered essential by institutional investors like insurance and pension funds, Sebi's executive director Pramod Rao said.
"NaBFID providing credit enhancements to such municipalities will be able to ensure that we have strong investor interest which comes in," he said at an event on infrastructure finance here.
He said only 100 of the 5,000 civic bodies are rated which leaves a "long tail" of bodies which can raise the money it helped with the credit enhancement. The government has notified NaBFID as a public financial institution.
The senior official from the capital markets regulator also said that this will not be working in perpetuity for any ci
