Friday, November 4 2005 14:23 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Panaji: In an effort to ensure faster action against any irregularities in the country's two major stock markets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will soon be installing an integrated marketing surveillance system, thus enabling the market regulator to keep a check on trading through out the day.

"As of now you only see end of the day action because we depend on any reports we get from the exchanges. If we see anything untoward on our screens then we make a phone call to clarify the matter. However, with this system intra day action will be possible as the exchanges will keep feeding information throughout the day," SEBI Chairman M Damodaran told reporters here yesterday (Nov 3, 2005) night on the sidelines of an award function.

"We will still have to get the information from the exchanges but they will continuously feed it to us in the format that we want, thus making it much easier for us to take any action if anything is out of the ordinary. We will be one of the few countries to have this technology," he added.

Damodaran is on his way to Australia tonight, where the technology was developed and will survey stock exchanges there to see how the system works.

When asked about fluctuating nature of the stock markets leading to speculation, he said, "As a market regulator, I am not worried by numbers. I should only be worried if there is a price movement on any stock that cannot be explained, that is when we step in."

Stressing on the need for investors all over the country to have access to trading, he said educating investors was the best way to ensure this.