RBI allows cos to sell forex options.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has for the first time allowed companies to write options - that is, sell forex options. As of now, companies are not allowed to receive money in the process of hedging. Simultaneously, the RBI is proposing to withdraw the earlier facility of zero cost structures. CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh adds perspective on the new RBI norm.

On the face of it, this is a major liberal step. These are draft proposals, but until now if companies were going to get dollar receivables, they could not sell it in advance or sell a call option for instance and receive a premium. All they could do is to ensure its price level by buying protection from the banks. They had to shell out money to hedge it. Now they can actually receive premium.

But to countervail it, at the moment where a zero cost structure was permitted where you sell an option and buy another one and the cost to you is zero. Now that structure is not allowed because according to the RBI you are anyway able to sell options and receive money.

Not everyone is happy because some people believe that some of the options are so expensive that you have to countervail it, and therefore a zero cost suited them. So the removal of this benefit is not taken very kindly from the initial sounds or noises that I have heard from industry.

The more important point is that even allowing companies to write options is not one of those unbridled freedoms. It is coming with a lot of hedges. The documentation detail has been increased so much that probably the freedom has actually been cramped in several ways.

For instance, the RBI rules say that the underlying exposure at any time shouldn’t increase the actual underlying exposure of the company; the tenure of the derivative product shouldn’t exceed the tenure of the underlying exposure. So a lot of rules are coming along with this and also probably only companies with AS-30 standards of accounting will be allowed. So it is really coming with a lot of rules. But it is a step forward and we will have to really see how the ultimate proposals come.