Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 27 (ANI): Ahead of the Union Budget for 2026-27, Sriram Krishnan, National Stock Exchange's Chief Business Development Officer, said market participants are expecting tax relief, particularly a reduction in Securities Transaction Tax (STT), while foreign investors are seeking doing away with Long-Term Capital Gains (LTCG) tax.

Speaking to ANI, Krishnan said, 'Market participants have expressed a view that they'd like to see some reduction in STT, which is seen as the major contributor to the cost of trading.'

He added, 'Foreign investors have (also) spoken about long-term capital gains tax if it can be done away with. That can help them because, repatriation can be more efficient and we will then be on par with some of the other countries that they invest into.'

Krishnan noted that several industries are also expecting some relief in the Budget amid global uncertainty.

'Overall, I think many industries are expecting some relief because they have all been going through a tough time thanks to the geopolitical situation and the fact that tariffs are affecting some of them. So I think the budget can be expected to be producing some of these outcomes.'

On NSE's product expansion, Krishnan said the exchange is preparing to roll out several new offerings in the commodities segment.

'NSE is lining up to improve the available products in the commodity segment. For example, we have approvals to launch a Brent crude oil contract, a 10-gram gold contract, and also a natural gas contract based on Indian prices.' He added, 'These are three products which will get launched very soon.'

He also highlighted growing participation in existing contracts and future plans.

'We are also seeing increasing participation in our WTI crude oil contract. And we are also trying to see if there are any amendments required in the current product proposition within commodities.'

Krishnan said approvals are awaited for debt market derivatives as well. 'Apart from that, we are waiting for approval for launching government bond index derivatives and corporate bond index derivatives.'

Commenting on the broader market scenario, Krishnan said retail participation has risen sharply over the last few years, particularly after Covid.

'As a stock exchange we are seeing a huge amount of retail participation in the last few years particularly after Covid.'

He said the number of investors has surged.

'The number of retail investors, the unique investors, has gone up from about 2.9 crores to 12.5 crores today. So that's a massive growth that we have seen in number of investors.'

On new listings on NSE, he said, 'In 2024, if you see, 268 companies got listed on NSE. In 2025, 220 companies got listed on NSE. So on average, we seem to have 200-plus companies coming to NSE every single year.'

Addressing market volatility, Krishnan said it is driven by external factors.

'Market volatility is not something that NSE will do anything about. It is what it is based on what we are seeing.' He added, 'In a geopolitically uncertain environment, there is bound to be some amount of stress and volatility and that is part of the natural twists and turns that we will see.'

On technology and risk management, he said, 'The NSE's technology has been very, very acclaimed for close to three decades now in the whole world.' Highlighting scale, he added, 'We have seen 2,000 crore order messages hitting NSE within one day, which is just six hours and 15 minutes.'

Krishnan said NSE is already deploying artificial intelligence across operations. 'NSE is already using AI in many of the activities. For example, in surveillance, in deciphering offer documents, in reading or summarising lengthy code judgments in training and development of the software codes and so on and so forth.' (ANI)