Director General of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, has been re-elected chairman of Middle East Regional Committee (AMERC) of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).
The AMERC comprises securities regulators who are IOSCO members within the Middle East and North Africa as well as sub-Saharan African regions. He will serve for another term of two years.
In a statement, the SEC said, Mr. Gwarzo’s re-election is not only a clear testament to Nigeria’s growing influence and improved image in the international community, but also a strong indication of the overwhelming support he enjoys among peer regulators following a very successful first tenure.
It will be recalled that in February 2015 members of the regional body elected Mr. Gwarzo as Chairman of AMERC during their 34thannual meeting in Muscat, Oman to complete the outstanding term of his predecessor Ms. Arumah Oteh. Upon his election, Mr. Gwarzo had outlined his agenda for the regional committee pledging to focus on advancing issues that would improve voice, visibility and inclusiveness for African/Middle Eastern markets while working towards more cooperation, especially to boost capacity building and cooperation.
This agenda aims to tackle three major challenges facing the frontier and emerging markets within the AMERC region which are dearth of capacity, inadequate visibility and poor level of integration. By this re-election, members have expressed desire to see Mr. Gwarzo continue to lead the Committee to keep addressing these challenges. For example, AMERC members had for years been yearning for the inclusion of Arabic as one of the official languages of IOSCO since about 50% of the member countries within the AMERC region are Arabic-speaking nations.
Knowing that adopting Arabic will engender greater visibility and participation in IOSCO’s decision-making, Mr. Gwarzo promised to vigorously advocate its adoption by the IOSCO Board. He persuasively argued on the importance of the systemically important Arabic-speaking member jurisdictions who regulate capital markets worth trillions of dollars in combined capitalization. His argument has been effective as the IOSCO Board recently considered and approved the adoption of Arabic as one of its official languages, a decision that pleases countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE but also elevates the inroads non-interest finance could begin to have on the global financial system.
In the area of capacity building, Mr. Gwarzo’s tenure has been even more remarkable. He has championed ideas within the IOSCO Board that will enhance the capacity of AMERC markets, especially tapping from their more developed counterparts in Asia, Europe and North America. Three notable ideas are already being implemented by IOSCO and will certainly be critical to addressing capacity gaps, particularly in frontier markets within the AMERC region. They are the establishment of regional hubs, the roll out of an online toolkit and commencement of a global certificate programme.
In fact, Mr. Gwarzo was chosen by the IOSCO Board to lead the first effort by facilitating the setting up of a pilot regional hub for capacity building for the AMERC region. The hub will be domiciled in Dubai, an internationally accessible travel destination. It will integrate a tailored program of regionally focused workshops, seminars and conferences to be delivered by experienced regulators and members of the academia. The hub will deliver an exceptional platform for members to exchange expertise, experience and knowledge. Considering the resource limitations facing African countries, he has advocated for scholarships within the design, sponsored by IOSCO, to subsidize the programmes so that countries are able to enhance their capacity within a modest budget.
The second idea, creating an online toolkit, aims to leverage technology to make information and knowledge sharing among regulators as seamless as possible. It will be a rich bank of data, information and resources from which regulators can frequently tap in their day-to-day operations. This is particularly useful for emerging market jurisdictions that require more resources to achieve capacity building tools as the toolkit comes in handy and at no cost. In addition to these efforts, Mr. Gwarzo has focused on partnering with fellow IOSCO members within sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from capacity building programmes of bigger markets such as Nigeria.
The proposed global certificate programme aims to standardize knowledge of financial markets across regions. It is designed to be really global with equal amounts of time spent by participants in Madrid and at the prestigious Harvard University in the United States. Again, He is also stressing the importance of awarding scholarships to less developed markets to enable them benefit from this programme, as they certainly need it most in spite of their resource constraints.
