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SEC seeks more pension funds investment in capital market

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has called for more pension funds to be invested in the nation’s capital market to help ginger the country’s economy.

 

The Director- General, SEC, Lamido Yuguda, who stated this at a press briefing in Lagos, said pension managers were supposed to invest significant amount of their portfolio in the capital market but that is really not happening at the moment. Yuguda noted that pension fund was very much underweighted to what actual allocation to the capital market should be.

 

“The capital market needs to understand that there is this pool of money waiting to be invested in the market. We need to have that evaluation and that dialogue with that important class of investors so that we can attract as much of the pension funds as possible.

 

“If we achieve that, we will see that even with the pandemic, the capital market will really roar in Nigeria, because right now if you look at the number of CIS accounts, it is less than 400,000, CIS accounts for a country that has a population of almost 200 million, that tells you that there is really a lot of potentials. So it’s really only left for the capital market to show that, there is value in this investment and also there is protection for the investor,” he said.

 

On what shape is the healthcare infrastructure fund going to take as COVI9-19 ravages the world, Yuguda noted that the Capital Market Support Committee on COIVD-19 had been raising funds to support the efforts in Chaircombating the disease. “In addition, the committee thought to set up a longer lasting fund, one that we can raise through the capital market to build health infrastructure around the country.

 

“You bear me witness that during the lock down many people could not access medical treatment outside the country. So the idea is for use to raise money through the capital market and put these infrastructure in place on commercial basis or as business that will be self-sustaining, that can return these monies to investors with good profit, good return.

 

“So what we have done is to set up a committee, it is a market wide committee and the committee has been giving the task to iron out the modalities and guidelines and objectives for the funds and how we will go about it.

 

“The committee will report to the main committee in the coming weeks and am sure that as we go on, we carry the press along so that you can know what is being done.

 

The most important thing there is that we set this up and we want it to be something that is long lasting and that will provide the needed health care infrastructure to our country,” he said.

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