August 30, 2019: Minister for Economic Affairs Division, Hammad Azhar on Friday said that the government is committed to develop the Capital Markets in line with international best practices.

“I strongly believe that vibrant and efficient capital market is important for resource mobilization and supporting the economic development of this region”, he said while addressing the closing ceremony of first Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Capital Market Regulators Forum.

The two day Forum with a theme of CAREC Capital Markets: Fostering Stronger Cross-Border Cooperation was co-organized by Security and Exchange Commission Pakistan (SECP) and Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The minister stressed the need for organizing such events to ensure closer regional cooperation saying that this forum is a first step towards the gradual integration of capital markets in the CAREC region.

He said “we talk about cooperation, the ideal scenario to formalize it would be to have, for example, a Memorandum of Understanding among capital market regulators, and for this I suggest that the CAREC Secretariat should play its role and help the member countries to formulate such arrangements.’’

He said the government wanted to modernize the regulation of local capital and in this regards cooperation need from Central Asian countries for sharing their experiences.

“We are evolving the mechanism for strengthening the country's institution for strong regulations” he added.

After his address, the Minister, while talking to the media, said the government is successfully maintaining the Current Account Deficit (CoD) and in future hoped that country would come out completely from CoD deficit.

He said that now priority of the government is to work on contracting fiscal deficit and removing this issue for economic stability and growth in the country.

Replying to a question, the minister said that Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s next meeting would be held in Bangkok, Thailand and Pakistan would participate in the meeting with full preparation and get success in this forum.

The first Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Capital Market Regulators Forum on Capital Markets was closed by the Minister of Economic Affairs Division as the guest of honor.

This forum underscored the need to evolve strong and meaningful cooperation among capital markets in the CAREC region.

The participants included foreign delegates from all CAREC member countries, namely Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and People’s Republic of China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

A significant number of local market participants and financial sector leaders attended the Forum.

The market participants appreciated the efforts of SECP and ADB for organizing such an important and informative Forum, which enabled the public and private sector delegates to share knowledge and have interactive networking meetings.

As way forward, it was considered that economic stability is not possible without regional coordination and there is a dire need to formalize the forum under the CAREC platform for cross-country learning, exchange of data, and eventually formalization of standard practices across region.

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