President Muhammadu Buhari, plans on setting up a national savings committee, that would help in boosting competitiveness in the Nigerian capital market.
The savings committee would be saddled with the responsibility of making recommendations to the government on the best ways to mobilize savings that would lead to economic growth, the minister of trade and investment, Otunba Adebayo, said.
Adebayo stated this in his speech, during the 23rd annual conference of the Chartered Institute for Stockbrokers, in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, with the theme; boosting capital market competitiveness in a challenging macro environment.
According to him, the government is poised to set the capital market as one of the main drivers of its economic agenda by encouraging both foreign and domestic companies to participate in the domestic stock market.
“The government is all out to provide an enabling environment for competitiveness among our domestic investors to grow and remain. Foreign portfolio investors come in and when anything happens, they take their money and leave but the direct investors will always be here with us, so we will ensure we provide an enabling environment for competitiveness,” he said.
Read also: Buhari meets Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, today
Adebayo noted the importance of an inclusive engagement with the investing public as well as those Nigerians that are far away from the capital market to ensure they are brought on-board
He urged the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers (CIS) to come up with policy proposals that would support and address Nigeria’s infrastructure challenges like roads, railways, and housing while government incentivize and provide the enabling environment to support this objective. This will be another way to boost the competitiveness of the capital market, he said.
“The best way to improve competitiveness is through a mixture of policies designed to help, improve capital market competitiveness and long term investment. All these measures will also improve both price and non-price competitiveness,” he said
He buttressed that CIS over the years had recorded significant progress in the area of providing, pieces of training, in stockbroking, securities, investment, and asset management and provide market research and financial news to provide best returns.
All these he said, are aimed at regulating the profession and providing stability in the financial sector for the growth and transformation of the Nigerian economy.
He noted that the improvements have been seen in moving the needle by 15th place, on the World Bank 2020 doing business. Nigeria was ranked 131 by the World Bank from a previous position of 146th.
Chairman, capital market and institution committee, Babangida Ibrahim said that a major challenge in the stock market is the task of building investor’s confidence. Most investors have lost confidence in the market due to inability of getting returns, he said.
“Whoever invests his money is waiting for returns of investment and that is what would boost his confidence in investing. It is investing and reinvesting that grows the stock mar
ket. Hence, when there is no investment, the market will not grow,” Ibrahim said.
He further revealed that a committee was set up to handle these issues, specifically unclaimed dividends, yet unclaimed dividends keep rising.
“To this end, by the 1st or 2nd quarter of next year, we will hold a national conference with major key players and we will talk to ourselves honestly to check what the problem is. Is it operational, policy, or legislative? If it is policy then we will call the attention of the government.
He tasked the committee to be an unofficial adviser to the government nothing they are professionals and will do well in monitoring what the government is doing as regards the policy that affects the market.
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