SEBI faces threat from foreign watch dogs

Capital market regulator SEBI (Stock Exchange Buero of India) faces shortage of trained staff to conduct effective surveillance, investigation and enforcement for a market that has grown by leaps and bounds in the last five years, a USAID report said. "SEBI lacks the required level of trained staff to conduct effective surveillance, investigation and enforcement... More staff and significant additional training are required," the US Agency for International Development (USAID) said in a report titled 'Deepening the Indian Capital Market: The Way Forward'. SEBI's regulatory task force has not grown despite significant growth of the market and intermediaries over the past five years. As of March 31, 2006, it had 441 employees in various grades, including 288 officers.

The watchdog is frequently confronted with situations where it recruits, trains and provides experience to staff that leave for higher paying jobs. Besides staff constraints, SEBI also lacks immediate access to specific information on market intermediaries, the report noted. It does not have a centralised information database for several thousands of market intermediaries that can boost surveillance capacity of the regulator at a time when it is facing shortage of trained staff, the report said, emphasising that the regulator needed a centralised database on the lines of the US Central Registration Department (CRD).

The above mentioned is a report came up from a so called watch dogs. Does anybody appointed them to watch our market and suggest? Isn't it a breach of one soverign democratic country's security?