A break-up of the funds requirement shows that in 2000-01, Sebi projected a requirement Rs 209 crore for office and residential premises and for office equipments, Rs 255 crore as corpus creation and refund of government loans.

While it has made future projection of Rs 320 crore for computerisation, augmenting staff and other infrastructure, the expenditure was subject to availability of funds, Sebi said.

Detailing this Rs 320 crore expenditure, it said Rs 60 crore would be used for computerisation, Rs 120 crore for setting up offices in other cities, Rs 15 crore for staff them, Rs 75 crore for EDGAR Project and Rs 50 crore for setting up of an institute for capital market and investor education campaigns.

During the period 1991-92 till 1999-2000, Sebi has spent a total of Rs 193 crore. The submission of a detailed break-up of expenditure by Sebi follows the apex court seeking the expenditure plan for the forthcoming years to show how the sum it proposes to collect as registration fee from stock brokers would be used.

On the revenue side, the total turnover fee that would be collected from the stock brokers based on the Sebi regulations works out to Rs 788.64 crore for period between 1995-96 to 1999-00. Out of this, Rs 556.72 crore is to be collected from the equity segment and Rs 231.92 crore from the debt market.

However, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Brokers Forum in its reply to SC has said the expenditure figure is highly inflated and prepared in a desperate attempt to sustain the fees income. It further stated that the same needs to be rejected by the apex court.

Brokers belonging to BSE and other stock exchanges argued the expenditure projection included an amount of Rs 150 crore towards corpus creation, and Rs 105 crore towards repayment of the government loan, which are more capital expenditure in nature against revenue ones. Section 13 of the Sebi Act provides for the central grant for such expenditure, if it is convinced, they contended. There is also no dearth of money for Sebi as it has invested a sum of Rs 147 crore in bonds and securities up to March 1999 and has surplus income of Rs 22 crore in 1997-98 and Rs 15.5 crore in 1998-99, the brokers forum said.