Govt exempts housing finance cos from XBRL filings

New Delhi: Providing relaxation for housing finance companies, the Corporate Affair Ministry has exempted such entities from filing financial statements in XBRL format.

XBRL, or Extensible Business Reporting Language, provides a common, electronic format for business reporting.

In a recent notification, the Corporate Affairs Ministry said "housing finance companies need not file financial statements" under the XBRL rules.

The ministry, which is implementing the Companies Act, has amended the Companies (Filing of Documents and Forms in Extensible Business Reporting Language) Rules.

Banking, insurance, power sector and non-banking finance companies are already exempted.
XBRL is a data-rich dialect of XML (Extensible Markup Language), the universally preferred language for transmitting information via the Internet, as per the ministry's website.

It was developed mainly to communicate between businesses and other users of financial information, such as analysts, investors and regulators.

Among others, companies having paid up capital of at least Rs 500 crore or those with a turnover of Rs 100 crore or more have to follow XBRL rules.