Uduk: SEC Working on Guidelines to Strengthen Corporate Governance

Peter Uzoho
The Acting Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms. Mary Uduk, has disclosed that the commission is currently, “working on a guideline to strengthen corporate governance of public companies in the country.”

This is just as Uduk stated that the Finance Act 2020, recently signed into law by the president has removed a lot of obstacles associated with securities lending.

The acting SEC boss stated this in Lagos, in her goodwill message at the 2020 annual symposium organised by the Issuers and Investors Alternative Dispute Resolution Initiative (IIADRI), with the theme: “Nigerian Tax Laws: Matters Arising.”

Uduk, who was represented at the occasion by the Deputy Director, SEC Lagos Zonal Office, Mrs. Hafsat Rufai, said: “In order to improve corporate governance, corporate bodies are enjoined to continuously comply with the Nigerian Code of Corporate Governance Scorecard.

“It is also worthy to note that SEC is working on a guideline to strengthen corporate governance of public companies.”
She added that the commission remained committed to creating an environment that would enable efficient capital formation and investor protection.

However, Uduk, who commended the signing into law, the Finance Act, said the, “Act has removed bottlenecks such as tax on manufactured dividends which had been a major disincentive to securities lending.”

She added that the “Act now permits insurance companies to carry over their tax losses like other companies, unlike in the past where they were restricted to carrying over these losses for only four years.
“The Finance Act also provides that dividends paid out of retained earnings, exempted profits, franked investment income and REIS are no longer taxable and stipulates that minimum tax is amended to 0.5 per cent of turnover. “

According to her, “the changes in the Act were targeted at promoting fiscal equity, reforming domestic tax laws to align with global best practices, introducing tax incentives for investments in infrastructure and capital markets, supporting micro, small and medium-sized businesses and raising revenues for the government.”

Earlier, in his address, the Chairman of (IIADRI), Mr. Moses Igbrude, said the symposium aimed at providing platform for stakeholders in the Nigerian tax value chain to dialogue and articulate ways of fostering mutual understanding between tax authorities and tax payers.
Igbrude, added that the programme was also intended to engender good working relationship that would result in mutual benefits to all parties.