The collection figure of the mutual fund industry stands at Rs 16,000 crore in the first eight months of this fiscal as against Rs 14,000 crore in 1997-98 and Rs 11,000 crore in 1996-97 during the corresponding period, Sebi chairman said at the national seminar on `financial markets and institutions: Developments and reforms' held here on Friday.

"This means that the market is getting institutionalised. The mutual fund industry is taking advantage of the reforms in the industry that have established freedom of operations and clear prudential guidelines," he said.

He was speaking of the silent changes that have sweeped the capital market over the last few years which, according to him, is often ignored by critics in their negative attitude to the role of theregulator in making the capital market a safer and efficient place for investors.

Mehta set out the agenda that Sebi has committed to finish in this fiscal. They include finalisation of regulatory guidelines for stock options for employees, collective investment schemes, sweat equity, credit rating and compulsory primary market issue of shares in demat form. The rough draft of most of these regulations has already been made and the final draft is at different stages of completion.

On the agenda is also the move to accelerate the move towards uniform settlement and rolling settlements. However, he ruled out immediate imposition of uniform settlement across stock exchanges as it will amount to extinction of regional stock exchanges.

"I know I'm speaking about this at the wrong place. While it may be in the benefit of the large markets based in Mumbai, this would litterally mean killing regional stock exchanges. Sebi is not for Mumbai alone, it has to look after the interest of all the markets in India.We have to finally introduce uniform settlement and rolling settlement, I'm not backing away from that commitment. But it should not be hurriedly brought in," he said.

The major area that Sebi is currently working on is bringing about corporate governance, Mehta said. "This is the most critical area that requires reform. But our powers are limited. Unless we tackle this we cannot go ahead further in the reform of capital market. This along with new accounting standards that Sebi is working on in association with ICAI will enable Sebi to enforce much required discipline among the corporates," he said. Sebi is currently working on a Confederation of Indian Industries' paper on corporate governance.