Kathmandu, Sept. 29
Chairman of the Securities
Board of Nepal (SEBON) Dr. Rewat Bahadur Karki has said that he was satisfied
with his performance as the chief of the capital market regulator in the
country because of his success in transforming the primary market and making the
market more inclusive and transparent.
Dr. Karki is retiring from
the chair of the SEBON after a month.
“The board has been
successful in making Nepali capital market as one of the most transparent
markets in South Asia,” he said at an interaction with journalists on Sunday.
“With the policy of allotting minimum 10 units of share in the Initial Public
Offering (IPO) and information technology enabled application and trading
service, it has been more inclusive as well.”
He reduced the minimum
number of units needed to apply to 10 from the existing 50 and take the entire
IPO system to online which facilitated the people from lower class as well as
far flung areas in the country to buy share.
People had to stand in a
queue all day long to fill up the form and apply for the IPO and the forms used
to be collected in sacks in the past. “People had to stand in the queue even to
claim their money, bonus and right shares. About four months would take to
clear the transaction and ownership transfer,” he said.
In Dr. Karki’s leadership,
the SEBON implemented mandatory DMAT account policy and ASBA system which
facilitated the investors to apply from any locations and end the problem of
holding money for a long period and losing interest of the applied money.
It barred the companies to
announce FPO (Further Public Offering) for the next five years of the first
offering and allowed the foreign financial institutions to issue bonds in local
currency.
In the secondary market,
SEBON made provision of clearing within three days, allowed the investors to
observe market depth, added three clearing banks, expanded the secondary market
and allowed the investors to involve in the auction of the unsold right shares
from outside the Kathmandu Valley.
“SEBON has increased the
service areas of merchant bankers along with their capital increment and
allowed the share brokers to conduct margin transaction,” said Dr. Karki.
The SEBON became the member
of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and International
Network on Financial Education of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD/INFE) and organised the first international conference on
financial literacy in collaboration with the latter.
According to Dr. Karki, programmes
like awarding the broker license to the subsidiary companies of the banks,
establishing provincial offices of the SEBON, establishing two commodity
exchanges, formulating Securities Act, and amending securities related rules
and bylaws are in the pipeline.
Published in The Rising Nepal Daily on 30 September 2019. 
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