De-politicising the capital market stabilises the economy

A political will to honestly delegate the economic emancipation is now believed to be utopian in our country. The future straights out to aggravate in the political firmament with all experiences and trends on board either. A mix of cultural, social, religious and economic practices hosts the food for politics of an area; the more the world is infested with crisis, the more the political acumen on economic affairs gets demanding, the more the population increases, the more the need for politics centered on economic discretion is starkly inevitable. Not going far away from the sub-continental political cult -- Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi to name a few, who have founded the economic development bridging the gap between political divisions. Ours walks are the reverse way round. Bangabandhu did all from his part and paid the price. Given his regime that took a bet to revamp a war-worn country, the country has been in manifold partitions ideologically ever since. The economy is the victim of our political division. A very good few people namely political stalwarts gain the upper hand while common mass remains pauperised. How economic benefit is sliced down from a political decision is yet to be learnt or no political decision has a crux of economic benefit now-a-days. Stock market fell a recent prey to our repugnant morass of politics practice. It is not the government operating itself the business enterprises but catalyzing the stream to establish ambiance; the government is presumably forgetful in this connection. Capital market is not dependent on some rules set by Securities Exchange Commission (SEC); rather, those rules help the market function efficiently. Behaviour of the listed companies, calculative risk of investors, and transparency of the brokerage houses govern the market to be sound. Unfortunately, only retail investors yield penalty for fault of any of three market players. Even more unfortunately, the investors digest expletives of market monitoring spokesperson very like the finance minister on top of their financial loss. More often than not it is said that investors queue up in share trade without knowing the systematic and non-systematic risk. This strikes a wrong note blatantly from no less important stature than his as saying so exposes weak structure and mechanism of market, which means, formation of stock market is such that trading follows no market rules for which the government is responsible. It is practical that investors who play the pivotal role put themselves in to the market for return. Better earnings, attractive capital gain and sound dividend payout ratios of stocks can make the market healthy with ups and downs that must be systematic. Like earthquake, outbidding manipulation for a short span can annihilate a capital market developed in many years. We must be pensive about where we are when worldwide market capitalization is $67 trillion. Mud-slinging now gushes out from different political platforms into capital market, an event that needs coming to a halt before it disperses any further. Government and the opposition are out to outflank on market collapse sprung from only lack of transparency, which is the root cause of all the maladies of stock market. SEC is not tied hand and foot that another commission on which political allegation breaks the surface is formed and procrastination is its only output reminding us of the fallacy that thing becomes new in course of time thus evidence. This happens only in this country to fool us. How will we bring back confidence in SEC, which has administered the market clumsily thus far? Unless the rights of retail investors are well guarded and accountability of intermediary bodies is installed, the capital market will go haywire the whole time. The writer is Business Manager, Energypac Ltd. He can be reached at e-mail: mirza.zakaria@yahoo.com