The Reserve Bank on Wednesday said it will set up a task force to provide a roadmap for development of a public credit registry -- a database of credit information -- for India.
“To improve transparency in credit markets and to facilitate better early intervention as well as risk-based counter cyclical provisioning, the Reserve Bank has decided to set up a high level task force comprising experts and relevant stakeholders,” RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya said.
The task force will evaluate the existing public and private infrastructure for credit information, assess any data gaps, study the best international practices and provide any roadmap for development of near real-time public credit registry for India, he said.
Public credit registry (PCR) is a database of credit information that is accessible to all stakeholders. Generally, a PCR is managed by a public authority and reporting of loan details to the PCR by lenders is mandated by law.
“The objective is not just improve credit assessment by financial lenders but also of financial lenders themselves,” Acharya told reporters after the monetary policy review.
This will address the information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders as well as to make the credit market more efficient. Private credit bureaus and public credit registry (PCR), generally operated by a central bank or a supervisory authority, work in tandem in most of the countries.