For the benefit of common investors, market regulator SEBI has slashed the fee for registering offer documents of public issues and mutual funds.

Besides, SEBI has also announced reduction in charges for offer documents for buyback of securities and registration fee for venture capital funds.

The SEBI board has taken the decision to lessen the fees, which comes into effect from April 1, 2008, at its meeting in New Delhi during the last month.

According to the announcement, the charge for registering offer documents for public issue will range from Rs 25,000 to Rs 3 crore depending on the issue size

For the rights issue, the charge will range from Rs 25,000 to Rs 5 lakh, depending upon the size of the offer.

The charges for the buy back of shares will be between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 3 crore, while for the mutual funds the charge has been cut from 0.03 per cent to 0.005 per cent, subject to a ceiling of Rs 50 lakh.

The charge for filing acquisition papers, under the takeover code, will range from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 crore, depending upon the size of offer.

For venture capital fund, SEBI has also cut the registration fee by 50 percent from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.

The decision to restructure the fees follows the recommendation of the internal committee headed by its whole-time member V K Chopra.