The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has scheduled Thursday to launch the revised capital market Master Plan.
The event is expected to be the implementation roadmap for the nation’s capital market over the next few years.
This is also as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is scheduled to hold the 3rd Quarter Capital Market Committee’s meeting the same day in Lagos.
The 10-Year Masterplan, which was launched in 2014, is being revised to reflect the dynamism of the market and developments in financial technology, among others.
Speaking on the latest initiative of the commission, the Director-General, Mr. Lamido Yuguda, the Revised Capital Market Master Plan 2015-2025 (RCMMP), explained that the revised Plan captured the challenges of our capital market in actualizing its role to drive national economic growth and more importantly, would serve as a blueprint to harness these opportunities to better position the capital market as the engine of our economic growth and development.
He said: “The first five years of the original Capital Market Master Plan 2015-2025 (CMMP) implementation focused on market and governance reforms in the aftermath of the global financial crises of 2008 and the Nigerian market correction that continued into 2009, with significant success.
“During that period, stock certificates were dematerialized, dividend management was automated, corporate governance standards were improved, intermediaries were strengthened through revised capital requirements and risk-based supervision, amongst several other initiatives implemented under the CMMP.
“Today, we face new challenges and opportunities. The pursuit of innovation and growth requires that we are open to opportunities and risks. Our choices are limited if we only seek opportunities within our traditional boundaries. Similarly, we inhibit our ability to grow if we do not curtail the threats of unregulated risk-taking. Promoting entrepreneurial and innovative outcomes, therefore, requires balancing our openness and more appetite for risk-taking with the critical need to protect investors.