The Director-General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms Arunma Oteh, has resumed duties as the Chairman of Africa and Middle East Regional Committee (AMERC) of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).
Oteh took over from Daisy Ekineh, who was until Monday, this week, Chairman of the body and former Acting Director-General of the commission. Oteh would remain in office until June this year, when election will be held to elect new chairman to lead the August group. Incidentally, Oteh is familiar with some of the country representatives of the August body.
In an interview with The Guardian, in Accra, Oteh thanked members of the group for their support for Nigeria, adding that transparency and regional integration would be further strengthened as part of measures to regulate supervision.
She also commended the organisation for its role in restoring investor confidence back to world capital markets, adding that the group has resolved to enhance the capacities of securities regulators as one of its major priorities.
Oteh said: "Establishing and maintaining an effective risk-based oversight framework, however, requires a comprehensive disclosure regime. To further strengthen regulation and win back investor confidence, we should adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
"Disclosure of information must protect proprietary property, while enabling sufficient access for the various participants to adequately understand and assess the risks attached to their activities. "Investors rely on information and a well functioning regulatory framework must adequately provide for the integrity of financial disclosures. An adequate disclosure regime also serves to benefits the regulator.
"As regulators of the market, we need to have deep and broader understanding of the workings of the securities market and the institutions and individuals who participate in them. This requires that we must be able to obtain comprehensive knowledge of the markets and oversee the risk management practice of those firms dealing with the investing public."
Secratary General of IOSCO, Greg Tanzer, who spoke in a similar vein earlier, said "regulatory capacity is a key priority of the organisation. We are a very inclusive organisation. "We have a set of 30 IOSCO principles of securities regulation, which is a roadmap to what we think is good securities regulation. It represents the collective wisdom of all the jurisdictions and accepted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
"We are currently reviewing those principles to make sure that they understand the lessons from market crisis. There are also technical assistance programmes to assist jurisdiction implementation of standards. We are very committed to building regulatory capacity. "We have educational program that was hosted by Nigeria SEC in 2009.Genrally we have put in place various strategies to enhance capacity regulation and this is done to reassure investors of safety of their investments in the capital market."
Speaking further he explained that "the market do have ups and downs and for a market to properly work, people would have peak time and slow times. To many investors, there is need to be educated and understand the cycles of the market. Obviously, why regulators are placing their own part, there is need for investors to be aware of their investments profile and the risks that are involved in investments. They should also understand the dynamics of the market."
(Source:Guardian)
