Pearl Awards tasks FG on policy consistency

Even as the Federal Government has granted Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption on all commissions on capital market transactions, the Pearl Awards Nigeria has called the government to be consistent in formulation of policies relating to stock market.

Its President/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tayo Orekoya, made this call last Thursday in Lagos during the press briefing to announce the 2014 Pearl Awards Nite scheduled to hold on November 30, 2014 at Eko Hotel & Towers Victoria Island.
According to Orekoya, although government VAT exemption on all capital market transaction is commendable, it should always be consistence in its policies. He pointed out that a number of times the FG had come up with one policy today only to change to another policy the next day to counter the first.
He said: “yes the Federal Government should be commended on exemption of VAT on stock market transactions 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 noted that a lot of investor education is needed to ensure Nigeria capital market growth. He argued that in spite of all the efforts of the market regulators; the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) towards investor education some investors are still weary to invest in stock market.
He however, tasked the regulators to do more stating that active investor sensitization and education is essential to further restore investors’ confidence in the market.
The Pearl Awards President explained that this year’s awards, like the previous ones will be determined utilizing ten key 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 others within the same sector based on aggregate points garnered from all the ten indices utilized for ranking”
“The market excellence awards category is based on recognition of entire market leadership in respect of each of the ranking indices while the third category is the overall highest award category-the Pearl of the Nigerian Stock Market”.
He noted that there would also be special recognition awards category which was introduced in the year 2000 to reward and honour individuals and media institutions that contributed remarkably to capital market development in Nigeria.
Some of the companies nominated for the awards include; Presco, Guinness Nigeria, Nigerian Breweries, Nestle, Forte Oil, FBN Holdings among others.