New Delhi, Nov. 12 -- As India's stock market regulator plans to revamp the securities lending and borrowing scheme (SLBS), experts have flagged steep margins and taxes, as well as a lack of awareness among retail investors as the main reasons for the scheme failing to gain popularity more than seventeen years after its launch.

SLBS allows an investor or a trader to short a stock, something that current regulations don't permit unless one owns the stock. The product allows investors sitting on idle shares to lend them for a fee to those wanting to short the stock either in anticipation of a fall in its price or to meet a delivery obligation or to simply exploit a price differential in the same stock traded on different segments-cash and ...