N22bn budget for SEC inadequate- Senate

The Senate has said that the N22.4bn allocated to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the 2024 budget was inadequate given the importance of the commission to the nation’s prosperity.

It also called for improved budgetary provision for the Commission.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Capital Market, Osita Izunaso made this known on Tuesday when the Director-General of SEC, Dr Emomotimi Agama, appeared before the committee to defend the commission’s 2024 budget.

He expressed sadness that the budget was too small to enable the commission to carry out its statutory functions.

Senator Izunaso said, “The SEC is regulating a lot of things. The budget is too small. Something has to be done. You have to regulate cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency alone should be able to give you a lot of money.”

Izunaso also tasked the commission on financial literacy calling on the management to provide an item in the budget to deal with financial literacy

The senator added, “There should be an item in the budget to deal with financial literacy because Nigerians need to be informed.

“You are aware that people have lost confidence in the capital market, in stock because of what happened in the past.

“So there is a need to regain that confidence. Financial literacy is extremely important,” Izunaso noted.

The DG while giving defending the budget said that the commission has a budgetary estimate of N22.4bn for the 2024 fiscal year.

Emomotimi said that of the figure, N11.715bn was for the total staff cost while  N1.219bn was for the retirees funds scheme.

According to him, N6.739bn was for other recurrent expenditure, while capital expenditure was projected for N1.178bn.

He said that the total expenditure stood for  N20.8bn, while the surplus and deficit was N1.5bn.

Emomotimi further said that the commission in 2023, attempted to improve the revenue of the commission by the introduction of various methods to be able to build the funds of the commission.

He said that the commission had in the last two years attempted to reduce its staff strength because “we are very top-heavy at SEC.

He added, “We hardly have the middle-level staff to be able to do some of the desk work that we ordinarily should do.

“We have a staff strength of 353 people in a commission that takes care of over 200 million persons. That is grossly inadequate for us to be able to do our work very well.”

He added, “We desire to be able to improve on that staff level by providing enough desk offices that will work around the clock to make sure that the investors are properly taken care of.”