Mumbai, Sept 3: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked corporates desirous of hedging crude oil and petroleum products to approach it for necessary approvals. "Corporates desiring to avail the facility of hedging their underlying exposures in crude oil/petroleum products may approach the RBI's exchange control department in Mumbai," the apex bank said on Sunday.The Union government had last week decided to extendhedging facilities in crude and petro products to the corporates.The approvals would be one-time, subject only to monthlyreporting of transactions through concerned authorised dealers, it said adding, no approval was required for individual transactions. "Under a simplified procedure, the RBI will give itsdecision within 3 days," it said. RBI said that it was issuing instructions to authoriseddealers permitting them to hedge crude and petroleum products.
Earlier, on September 28, 1998, the apex bank had issued detailed guidelines for accessing international commodity exchanges for hedging commodity price exposure.
These guidelines would now also be applicable to thehedging of crude and petro products, the RBI said.The hedging facility would be available for both salesand purchases and "in addition to exchange traded products, corporates can now access over the counter hedging products," the RBI added.
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