PEARL Awards hinges capital market growth on policy consistency

Holds 2014 award nite

FOR the nation’s capital market to become more competitive and attract huge investors’ participation, the need for consistency in policies and regulations has been stressed.

The President, PEARL Awards Nigeria, Tayo Orekoya, who identified policy somersault as one of the major problem affecting the growth of the capital market, urged government to ensure that it initiates policies that would attract more investments in the market and pursue its sustainability. Orekoya, while fielding questions to Journalists at a press briefing to announce the 2014 Pearl Awards Nite slated for November 30, 2014 in Lagos, lauded the Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption on all commissions on capital market transactions by the federal government, but however argued that the government, a number of times, has initiated policies and suddenly introduced another in a couple of weeks to counter it.

“Yes the Federal Government should be commended on exemption of VAT on stock market transaction but it should strive to be consistent. We have recorded a number of incidences where government counters itself with policies. We don’t want that repeating all the time because inconsistencies in policies affect the capital market negatively”.

Orekoya also pointed out that the regulators should embark on a lot of investors’ education, adding that new product development is also needed to deepen the market. The Pearl Awards President explained that this year’s awards would be determined using ten globally acceptable parameters which include turnover growth; return on equity, earnings yield; share price appreciation; dividend cover, profit margin ratio amongst others.

“The 2014 Pearl awards as usual would be in three main competitive categories namely the sectoral leadership awards, which rewards a company for outperforming other companies within the same sector based on aggregate points garnered from all the ten indices utilized for ranking.”