Finance Minister Jaswant Singh said necessary steps would be taken to curb insider trading. He was addressing concerns relating to market manipulation raised by parliamentary consultative committee members, who met to discuss capital market issues.

Singh also said the market volume was thin and there was a need to buttress it. He was responding to members' suggestions that the market must have more initial public offerings.

In a two-hour presentation, the Securities and Exchange Board of India pointed out that IPOs, both in number and value, had doubled in the first half of the current financial year from the same time last year.

It also said the average annual fluctuation in the Indian stock market was 1.6 per cent, compared with 0.9 per cent in South Korea.

Figures collated by primary market monitor Prime Database show Rs 1,868 crore (Rs 18.68 billion) was raised through public issues in the first half of 2003-04. Of this, Rs 505 crore (Rs 5.05 billion) was raised in fresh equity and Rs 240 crore (Rs 2.4 billion) through secondary equity offering.

This was 136 per cent higher than the total mobilisation of Rs 792 crore (Rs 7.92 billion) in the corresponding period of 2002-03.

Singh's assurance on measures to curb insider trading followed members concerns over Alliance Mutual Fund's alleged bungling under Samir Arora. Sebi, in its presentation, told the members that it was keeping a strict vigil on the market.

On the issue of corporate governance, Singh said it was not just limited to regulation but to a larger effort to put in place ethical practices.

He said quarterly disclosure by companies was in the interest of investors and, in fact, a global practice.

Half-a-dozen members in the consultative committee, Manmohan Singh, Nawal Kishore Rai, Parmeshwar Kumar Agarwalla, Abani Roy, Ashwani Kumar and Santosh Bagrodia, attended Monday's meeting.