Finance Minister Asad Umar said on Monday that Pakistan's demand and concerns were legitimate after the way India used Financial Action Task Force (FATF) platform for political purposes. Replying to the questions of media persons after addressing the function on corporate governance, he said Pakistan's concerns and demand for removal of India from co-chair of FATF were very legitimate after the way the platform was used by India through an organised lobbying against Pakistan.
The Minister said "we started receiving calls one week ahead of the board meeting about India lobbying against Pakistan." He said India had been approaching individual companies for lobbying against Pakistan. The Minister further stated that there was no concept in the rules that individual country should present report and only one report was presented but India in the meeting presented its own report. "India misused the platform for political purposes", he added.
Earlier speaking at the ceremony, the Finance Minister deplored that service sector was required to fulfill 1,500 regulations and had to face 40 agencies, which enforced those regulations. Finance Minister said that a large part of the compliance should have been left as voluntarily compliance and regulator needed to facilitate the company which was operating as sole proprietorship to encourage it to become corporate body.
Umar implored that "please do not have a system where a service sector company has to fulfill 1,500 regulations and has to face 40 agencies which enforce these regulations". "We want to encourage more and more companies in the fold of corportisation and incorporate themselves and then many of them would go on to become listed companies," said the minister.
The Minister said those companies which were listed need to utilise the capital market to mobilise national saving and to make those savings into production assets.
Umar said that as both the chairmen of Pakistan Stock Exchange and Securities Exchange Commission of Pakistan were here so "we need to get beyond what everyone knows that that companies re not getting incorporated and that incorporated companies do not get listed and those listed are keen to get de-listed."
"The way we act, we are going to add more compliance burden of compliance and discouraging them even more to coming into fold of corportization," he said and questioned that "are we going to make it even more discouraging the companies to be listed at stock exchange?" The Minister stated that regulators had to keep that result in mind. The Finance Minister said that "please do look at the system and if laws are needed to be changed change them." The Chairman SECP said that global corporate best practices were being adopted to bring about betterment in the corporate sector and steps were being taken to improve the performance of the departments in public sector etc.
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