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Sagnarigu, Ghana – The Paramount Chief of Tamale, Naa Yab Gulkpe-Naa Alhaji Alhassan Abdulai, has underscored the urgent need for the Securities and Exchange Commission to establish an office in Tamale to serve the growing needs and desire of the populace to investment in the Ghanaian capital market.
Accordingly, the revered traditional leader has assured the SEC of the readiness of his paramountcy to assist the organisation whenever they were ready to set up an office so as to make it easier for the public to have access to them whenever the need arises.
‘Having a face-to-face interaction with someone builds confidence and credibility when it comes to making investments. And I believe with your physical presence here in Tamale a lot of these fraudulent activities would stop or drastically reduced because you’d always be there to educate the public and they can also come to you make enquiries about suspicious investment schemes”.
Naa Yab Gulpke-Naa said these through the Tuu-Naa Abdulai Sufyan who chaired an event of the Securities and Exchange Commission dubbed “Time With SEC” at the Modern City Hotel in the Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern Region.
According to him, lack of understanding of the capital market coupled with low awareness creation and limited investment education especially in the peri-urban and rural areas made indigenes of these areas vulnerable to fraudulent schemes.
While commending the SEC for working assiduously to ensure sanity, transparency and fairness in the capital market, he urged them to do more by continuing to take steps to bring perpetrators of Ponzi and pyramid schemes to book.
Naa Yab Gulpke-Naa, however maintained, that the significance of having a robust capital market could not be downplayed because a growing economy such as that of Ghana needed a new form of financial intermediary to finance investments that were either too long term or too risky for commercial banks to venture into.
Under the theme: “The role of the SEC in the capital market”, the heavily attended event brought together participants from various institutions within and outside Tamale. Over one thousand individuals including business owners, business managers, heads of financial and banking institutions, teachers and students of tertiary and second cycle institutions.
The Director-General of the SEC, Rev. Ogbarmey Tetteh, said the Tamale conference was part of a nationwide programme that sought to create an understanding of how the SEC operated, various capital market players, laws regulating the capital market, where and how to buy company shares, and updates on the government bailout program among others.
“We are here because we know capital is important in every economy and there is therefore the need to understand how capital can be accessed and be deployed. When it comes to capital it is important to also understand that within the financial market you can look at the short term of the money market and then the long term of the capital market. We are here for the capital market.
We are here to empower you with information that will enable you to leverage the potential of the capital market in raising capital for business and growing savings through investors. We are here to let you know that the capital is not reserved for a select few but for everyone willing and able to pay the price of getting relevant knowledge in order to make informed choices regarding their money matters, be it individuals, families or the corporate. We are here to underscore the fact that the capital market is regulated activity and in Ghana the SEC is the regulator with the mandate to regulate and promote the growth and development of an efficient, fair and transparent securities market in which investors and the integrity of the market are protected. We do this among other things through our licensing regime, supervision both on and off site, rules and regulations as well as enforcement action and market education”, he said.
While commending the chiefs and people of Tamale and for that matter the Northern Region for their overwhelming participation in the conference, Rev. Tetteh also assured the Paramount Chief of Tamale of the SEC’s willingness to establish an office in Tamale in the future.
He observed that the overwhelming number of participants beyond the expected number of people invited by the SEC reinforced the suggestion and need to have an office “perhaps one that would cater for the Northern Region and other Regions of the North”.
By SavannahNewsOnline.Com/Kusiele Ziem
