Global banking body Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) has invited India to become a member of the committee, signalling the country's growing importance as a global financial power. India has also become a member of the Financial Stability Forum (FSF).

BCBS does not possess any formal supranational supervisory authority, and its conclusions do not, and were never intended to, have legal force. Rather, it formulates broad supervisory standards and guidelines and recommends statements of best practice in the expectation that individual authorities will take steps to implement them through detailed arrangements — statutory or otherwise — which are best suited to their own national systems.

At its meeting last week, apart from India, the BCBS invited other countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, Korea, Mexico and Russia, to become members. The Basel Committee's governance body will also be enlarged to include the central bank governors and heads of supervision from these new member organisations.

With its expanded membership, the committee is comprised of representatives from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The committee's Secretariat is based at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.

The FSF was established by the G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in 1999 to promote international financial stability through enhanced information exchange and international cooperation in financial market supervision and surveillance. The current FSF comprises national financial authorities from the G7 countries, Australia, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland, as well as international financial institutions, international regulatory and supervisory groupings, committees of central bank experts and the European Central Bank. The FSF Secretariat is based at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.