Securities and Exchange Board of India said on Thursday that moving towards T+1 settlement whereby payment would be made the next day of transacting shares, might not be possible unless Real Time Gross Settlement was put in place by the Reserve Bank of India.

Sebi chairman G N Bajpai said the new secure inter-bank payment system might be put in place by the end of this financial year.

He said RBI was working on the new system and the market regulator was interacting with it.     

RBI Governor Bimal Jalan, while announcing the recent Monetary and Credit Policy, had said the development of various modules of the software required for the system was in progress.

The initial set of modules was expected to be delivered by the next month for the members to conduct tests and familiarisation exercises and the live run of RTGS was scheduled towards the end of 2003, he had said.

RTGS provides for real time processing and settlement of funds transfer and the first phase of the project involved creation of an integrated accounting system to handle all the internal and inter-bank accounting transactions for RBI.

Asked whether T+1 settlement could be introduced the next fiscal, Bajpai said first let the system be in place, then one has to see the working of it before taking any decision.