SECP – past, present and future

Anwar Kashif

Karachi

The organisation I knew in early 90s was a typical government organisation known as Corporate Law Authority without having any feeling that it is the main artery of business investment which leads to the economic sustainability of the country. Manual filing of documents, huge file records everything was moving with greasing of palms and the investor whether he is a local or a foreign have to bow before the fundamental approaches of the officers and their staff. 

Then it became a Commission and the Corporate Law Authority became the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan completely transformed to a vibrant, progressive and result-oriented regulator. But after certain time, as it happens in Pakistan, any good work which starts tends to lose its roots and SECP once again became a hybrid model and the ultimate sufferers are the investors and the enterprises. 

Now there are a number of things which are really obstructing the corporate growth and creating frustration among the new investors and new ventures. The SECP has centralised the company incorporation process which is against the basic mechanism of Ease of Doing Business because it states that decentralization is more appropriate and result-oriented. Even though the process of incorporation  is fully automated, but in case of any query or objection, then the entire process is at a halt and depends  upon one person who is sitting in Islamabad and his availability has delayed number of hours, days and  months to get the query resolved and the incorporation done. So it is the need of the hour to de-centralised the same and that the process of incorporation should be integrated with different departments such as Nadra, Ministry of Interior, etc., so that in the first place the company can get registered immediately and in case of any adverse report, SECP is empowered to take appropriate action under the Companies Act, 2017.

Time-bound digital certified copies are again a hassle for the investor, which coupled with the heavy fee for acquiring a physical certified copy cause hardships for the investors and shareholders. These heavy fees need to be rationalized and the fee of certified copy should be added as part of the registration fees of the company. 

By and large, the overall dynamics of SECP are of a progressive regulator but time and again changes have been made to plug in certain risk areas which are not important if you are a modern regulator using information technology. Therefore, SECP should learn the lesson from other developed countries whereby you can register a company from anywhere in the world and once you have registered the same you are in there country. The SECP needs to adopt this policy and promote it through various mediums such as electronic and print mediums. Similarly, the SECP should widely circulate and easily provide access to their guidelines and circulars to enable every segment of the businesses to be aware of their guidelines which may sometimes restrict their initial liberty and would also allow them to work completely in different directions.

The future of SECP is of a progressive regulator with the capacity to understand the need of the investors coming to Pakistan as well as the local investors and the startup regime.