F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Shafqat Mahmood on Thursday said that financial literacy would become part of new curriculum for equipping the younger generation with financial literacy.
The minister said that it was also highly important to inculcate financial discipline, culture of savings and the benefits of investment in them.
He was speaking at the launch of the book entitled ‘Savings and Capital Market’ here at the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) headquarters.
He appreciated the SECP’s efforts to promote financial literacy and awareness about investments.
In order to improve the educational standards, the government was preparing a new curriculum, he said.
He said the subject of financial literacy would be made part of the new curriculum.
The Chairman SECP, Farrukh Sabzwari, a senior representative of the World Bank Marius Vismantas, and head of the SECP’s investor education department Khalida Habib, also spoke on the occasion.
The book covers subjects such as capital market of Pakistan, PSX, PMEX, NBFC sector, mutual funds, VPS, REITS, Islamic finance products and subjects of personal financial planning.
The SECP published this book in collaboration with the World Bank.
The minister advised the public not to invest in unregulated sectors. Instead, they should invest in regulated sectors such as stock market, mutual funds and insurance. In this way, their capital would be safe and that it would be transferred to their heirs in a transparent and easy manner, he added.
He acknowledged the fact that awareness about investment in the capital market was limited.
“We have to intensify our efforts to promote financial literacy and awareness.”
He added that the SECP’s role of regulating the capital market in a balanced manner was of critical importance.
The SECP Chairman, Farukh Sabzwari, said that investor protection is the SECP’s top priority and we believe that the safe investor was the one who was financially literate and aware.
He said that the SECP was about to introduce a new broker custody model, which was more secure, protected and more transparent.
He said people asked him if it was SECP’s job to educate people or it was their to regulate the market.
“I believe that it should be SECP’s top priority to make people aware and financially literate as this helps in achieving our main objective of maintaining discipline in the markets.”
He said that investor education was also important because people were shy of investing in regulated sector. “As of today, there are only 250,000 investors in stock market. Some 30 years back, the figure was 90,000, which showed “We could not sufficiently expand the investor base and that is why we need to educate people and need to expand our investor education programme”, Sabzwari said.
He added that we also need to educate the people about fraudulent sales agents.
The Chairman SECP said that people should know what was miss-selling, what were their rights and responsibilities as investors, so that no one could deprive them of their hard-earned money by offering lucrative unrealistic profits.
The World Bank’s lead specialist, finance and markets, Marius Vismantas said that the World Bank had been collaborating with the SECP over a number of initiatives for the development of capital markets and the launch of the book was a one chapter of the mutual cooperation.
He said that the financial literacy was vital for improving lives and it applied to everyone. The art was not making money but keeping it.
He said that sooner “We educate our youth about financial matters, savings, investments, the better.” It was imperative to achieve the objective of national development,” he said.
Earlier, the SECP’s investor education department head and Executive Director, Khalida Habib said that regulators around the world had recognized the investor education was a way of providing investor protection and believed that the educated investors strengthen the regulators’ watchdog role.
She said the SECP, therefore, assigned a high priority to its investor education programme.
She briefed participants on the SECP’s dedicated investor education program “Jamapunji” that covers the entire non-bank financial sector.
She said the programme helped investors understand the markets and enabled them to make informed investment decisions.
Through Jamapunji programme, the SECP was reaching out to more and more investors every day in different places and in new ways.
The Managing Director, Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), Richard Morin, Chairman, Central Depository Company (CDC), Moin M. Fudda, Member, SECP’s Shariah Advisory Board, Dr Tahir Mansoori, Program Director, Higher Education Commission (HEC) – National Business Education Accreditation Council (NBAEC), Ahtesham Raja and other senior officials attended the event.
