MUMBAI (Reuters) - India will allow individuals to bid in the government's treasury bill auctions to encourage wider participation, the Reserve Bank of India said on Thursday.
The RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, who is stepping down after his term ends on September 4, has been keen to bring retail investors into government bonds to improve the breadth of the market.
Individual investors will be able to buy a maximum 5 percent of the amount of the issue, or any other percentage within that range determined by the RBI, a central bank statement said.
The facility will be operational from August 3.
Currently commercial banks are the biggest buyers of these short-term papers.
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Suvashree Dey Choudhury; editing by Mark Heinrich)
