The House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market and Institutions,  will in January 2012 hold a public hearing   on the nation’s capital market as part of efforts to  resolve  the  crisis in the market.

The Nigerian capital market has been on the downside  since 2008 after the global crisis. After recording some recovery in 2010, the market is set to end 2011 with a fall.

Regulators and other stakeholders had made efforts to restore investors’ confidence, which had not yielded the desired results. However, as we enter into the new year, those efforts would be intensified as the House Committee would conduct a public hearing  on the issues the market with a view to resolving them.

The House had on December 14, passed a resolution mandating the Committee to conduct the public hearing.

Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Herman Hembe, confirmed to the THISDAY that the public hearing would take place in January.

“I can confirm to you that as part of efforts to resolve issues in the  capital market and restore confidence back to the market and  as part of our commitment to ensure that wealth of investors   who patronise the Nigerian capital market are  preserved, the Committee will hold a public hearing in January.   The date for the hearing will be decided  and made known to members of the public” Hembe said.

Still  as part of  efforts to reposition the market,  the  capital market community comprising the apex regulator, self regulator organisations and operators recently held a retreat in Uyo, Akwa Ibom,  under the Capital market Community (CMC).

The retreat, which  was the first of its kind was used to review  how the market had fared in the outgoing year and how to reposition it in  2012.
Assessing  the outcome of the retreat, the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms. Arunma Oteh, said it exceeded the  expectations of the all the stakeholders.

According to her,   the objective of the retreat was to  give  operators an opportunity as a community to assess what were the issues that they  had to deal with in 2011.

“What are the successes, what are the challenges we faced? And then map out the way forward to ensure we benefit from the experiences of 2011 for 2012. In my estimation, and I know I speak for all my colleagues, we exceeded our expectations in terms of what we wanted to achieve for the capital market retreat,” she declared.

According to her, some of the things they discussed related to how to ensure that both local investor base and retail investor base are as active as they can be in our market.

“What we will do early next year is to map out more clearly that plan to ensure that local investor base are able to take up the opportunity that the market that had declined provide. Because we don’t want a situation where it is the international investors who are picking up the equities at reasonable prices and both our local institutional and local retail investors are not able to. So, we have mapped out some very specific plans which we will further develop in January,” she said.

Source: ThisDay/Goddy Egene