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‘Capital market must be credible, transparent to regain confidence, FDI’

By Helen Oji
07 November 2016   |   2:52 am
Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo has stated, that, the nation’s capital Market, can only regain investors’ confidence and attract the needed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), if it is credible, stable and transparent.
Olusegun Obasanjo

Olusegun Obasanjo

Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo has stated, that, the nation’s capital Market, can only regain investors’ confidence and attract the needed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), if it is credible, stable and transparent.

Obasanjo, who made this statement while receiving officials of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) on a courtesy visit to his town in Abeokuta, recently, charged the SEC to restore investors’ confidence in the market.

He stressed the relevance of the market in the nation’s economic growth, urging the commission to promote the standard of the capital market to make it more competitive among the peers.

He added that the economy was in dire need of foreign investment to help it wriggle out of recession and reclaim its position in the global economy.

“When we are in a situation we are now, I think it must be clear to all of us that we must do something quickly to get us out of recession. There is no doubt that your own area of activity has a key role to play and so the Commission has to work on investment, and has to attract fund.

“You will notice that over the years, many people have lost fortune with regards to their investment in the Nigeria’s capital system and their confidence in the system has therefore been eroded.

“We, therefore, need to step up measures at restoring the confidence through international best practices for more investment so that we can quickly get out of the recession we are in,” he said.

The Director General of SEC, Mounir Gwarzo, who addressed newsmen after the visit, disclosed that the Commission was in Abeokuta to organise Quiz Competitions in Primary and Secondary schools in efforts to inculcate financial literacy and investment culture in the young ones.

“One of the things we are doing now is financial literacy aimed at inculcating financial knowledge and culture of saving at the Primary and Secondary school levels, and that is why we are in Abeokuta. We hope to move round the country having successfully organised it in Kano and Port-Harcourt,” he said.

He said some of the measures put in place by the commission to ensure restoration of confidence in the capital market included the system of electronic dividends and the corporate governance scorecard that had also been launched.

Gwarzo added that the Commission had almost concluded plans for diploma and degree courses to be offered in various universities in the country for better knowledge of activities of the capital market.

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