Staff Correspondent
The finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, on Saturday said the government would take necessary measures for strengthening and developing the country’s capital market to make it a major source of financing investments.
‘We want to increase investment on a massive scale and a major portion of funds for the investments should come from the capital market,’ the minister of the new government said coming out of a meeting with officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission and stock exchanges at the commission’s conference room.
As the capital market is a major source of financing, the government will be empathetic in considering proposals of the capital market stakeholders for the market’s growth, he said.
‘Our capital market is the second smallest source of financing,’ said Muhith, adding that ‘in many countries the major portion of investment financing comes from their capital markets.’
He said the government would enact the book-building system of initial public offerings’ pricing soon to encourage the entrepreneurs to list their profitable companies with the bourses.
‘In the meeting, we discussed the issue of involving people in bigger number in the capital market,’ the finance minister said. ‘They [stock exchanges] have proposed that the number of beneficiary owners’ accounts should be increased to 50 lakh from the existing 19 lakh and I have concurred with their proposal.’
‘We also discussed developing the bond market and share offloading by the state-owned enterprises,’ he said.
Recently, the country’s capital market achieved a significant growth in terms of market capitalisation and attained progress in infrastructure and regulations, he observed. ‘But the contribution of market capitalisation to the gross domestic product is still very low,’ he added.
SEC chairman Faruq Ahmad Siddiqi said, ‘We expect that the government will speed up the process of offloading of shares by the SoEs already under the process and also offloading more SoE shares in the market in phases.’
He said the commission would finalise the book-building system of the IPO pricing rules very soon.
A Dhaka Stock Exchange team led by its president Abdul Haque and a Chittagong Stock Exchange team led by its president Nasir Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury were present in the meeting.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
