RRA for withdrawal of 239 more circulars: RBI

Mumbai : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday said its Regulations Review Authority has recommended the withdrawal of additional 239 redundant circulars. Once RRA’s latest recommendation is implemented, the total number of such circulars withdrawn will touch 714.

Regulations Review Authority (RRA 2.0) was set up to review the regulatory instructions, remove redundant and duplicate instructions and reduce the compliance burden on regulated entities. The Regulations Review Authority (RRA 2.0) has recommended withdrawal of an additional 239 circulars. With this, the total number of circulars which stand withdrawn would be 714,” it said.

The central bank has started issuing the notifications containing the list of specific instructions recommended for withdrawal separately. Earlier this month, RBI had said RRA had recommended the withdrawal of additional 225 circulars. RRA had recommended the withdrawal of 150 circulars in the first tranche of recommendations in November 2021 and 100 circulars in the second tranche of recommendations in February 2022.

In the second tranche, RRA had also recommended discontinuation/ merger/ conversion to online submission of 65 returns along with the creation of a new ‘Regulatory Reporting’ link in the RBI website to consolidate information relating to regulatory reporting. RRA 2.0 focuses on streamlining regulatory instructions, reducing the compliance burden of the regulated entities by simplifying procedures and reducing reporting requirements, wherever possible.

The central bank had set up RRA initially for a period of one year from April 1, 1999, for reviewing the regulations, circulars, and reporting systems, based on the feedback from the public, banks and financial institutions. The recommendations of RRA enabled streamlining and increasing the effectiveness of several procedures, simplifying regulatory prescriptions, paved the way for issuance of master circular and reduced reporting burden on regulated entities, RBI said in April last year while announcing the setting up of RRA 2.0.