CDSL offered competitive service charges to the investors and depository participants compared to state-owned National Security Depository Ltd (NSDL), Damani, who is the former president of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), said here while speaking at an investor protection seminar organised by the BSE in association with the Tamil Nadu Investors here said.Claiming that the CDSL was much ahead in its performance compared to its rival NSDL, he said CSDL started making profit in the very first year of its operation unlike the NSDL, which had recorded loss.

Hinting that CDSL might bring down the service charges in September in anticipation of increase in volume of trading, he said by another 18 months it would do twice the business done by the NSDL. He said CDSL was travelling across the country to interact with the investors and to know their problems, which he alleged had made NSDL to reduce its charges. He said CDSL had a net worth of Rs 100 crore of which Rs 30 crore had been spent on software and hardware development. /Speaking about the interest taken by the BSE in protecting interest of the investors, Damani said it was the first in the country to float a fund for protecting the investors.He said the BSE volume which hovered around Rs 15,00 crore on each trading day was expected to jump to about Rs 3,000 crore in another few months.Flaying the FIIs for not retaining their funds in the market for longer time, he said they were not investors but were traders who withdrew investments whenever the conditions were favourable for them.Earlier FIIs used to mandatorily maintain their investment for two or three months due to maintain of shares in physical formats. With the demat format coming into being, it had made their job easy to exit with the investments, he said.He also felt that the regulatory body Sebi like the Securities Exchange Commission of the US should be represented by stock brokers as it would help while drafting policies.Earlier, alerting the investors on various risks factors in stock investment, another director of the CDSL Bhagirath Merchant said investors should go throught the track records of the company before making investments.They should also carefully see the difference of share prices prevailing in different bourses in the country before making settlements.He said an investor who was not prepared to take risks should investment in mutual funds' selected funds.