By KELVIN MUDENDA –
FINANCE Minister Alexander Chikwanda has challenged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Committee of Insurance Securities and Non-Banking Financial Authorities (CISNA), to address barriers to the flow of capital experienced in most member countries.
Mr Chikwanda said SADC and CISNA needed to work hard to attract surplus holders of capital into the potential productive sectors within the region and be able to create a conducive environment for a strong base of domestically active financial institutions such as, long term Insurance companies, retirement funds and unit trusts.
He said it was important for CISNA to continue realising regional cooperation, maintaining regional financial stability in times of turbulence and crisis while promoting investments leading to the creation of wealth.
“CISNA must therefore work hard to strengthen insurance, capital markets and non-banking financial policies and strategies in order to sustain and build on the economies of the region. I would therefore like to commend CISNA for its current strategic plan which focuses on actualising this vision.
However, it is important to note that a good strategic plan may be meaningless unless we all devote our resources and energy towards its full implementation,” Mr Chikwanda said.
Mr Chikwanda was speaking in Livingstone, during the official opening of the 36th meeting of the committee of Insurance, Securities and Non-banking Financial Authorities (CISNA) held at AVANI hotel.
He said financial markets were increasingly becoming integrated and that Africa could not afford to be left behind and that it was important for CISNA to harmonies laws, practices and operations in the financial sector to ensure that the region was competitive in order to facilitate cross border financial transactions among member states.
“It is evident that regulation is important to CISNA’s operations. It is also the task of CISNA to ensure that regulations are improved and supervision of cross border transactions to prevent fraudulent and other prohibited practices are enhanced in order to serve interests of the investors and stakeholders,” he said.
Mr Chikwanda said with the harmonisation of laws,SADC would be able to attract investors to the region because of similar regulations and that Zambia was committed to that process by supporting the three financial regulators namely; Pensions and Insurance Authority (PIA),Security and Exchange Commission(SEC) and the Bank of Zambia (BOZ) in the process of law reforms and that had made it easier for financial service regulators to amend their respective laws in order to come up with laws that conform to international standards.
“Another issue that we must address is the financial inclusion. A number of studies have revealed that the status of an economy is likely to increase growth potential if its financial system is inclusive and reaches all sectors.
“It is therefore gratifying to note that CISNA has taken a pro-active step on the creation of inclusive financial markets by developing a draft regional financial inclusion strategy,” he said.
About 14 SADC countries are attending the 36th Bi-annual CISNA meeting that comes to a close today.