TEHRAN - Head of Iran’s Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) Majid Eshqi has said his organization’s current priority is to attract capital and direct liquidity towards constructive production, IRIB reported on Saturday.

Speaking at a meeting of the government and private sector dialogue council, Eshqi considered capital formation as the most important challenge of the economy and said: “Financing [economic projects] and directing liquidity towards production is the priority of the Securities and Exchange Organization.”

“[currently] The most important economic challenge [in the country] is the issue of capital formation because the rate of the mentioned item [capital formation] has been negative in the last 10 years and is estimated to be lower than the depreciation rate,” the official explained.

If the mentioned trend continues in the same way in the long term, it will cause non-development, depreciation of industries, and the stagnation of the economy, he noted.

“Injecting liquidity in the production sector is now considered one of our important goals, but we are facing a series of challenges among which the decrease in investor confidence can be pointed out,” Eshqi said.

Back in June, the SEO head said our approach in the capital market is to create the basis for the active presence of the private sector in the market to attract the financing they need to achieve their economic goals.

According to the official, SEO would formulate, implement, and monitor its policies and programs including supporting investors, creating a transparent, efficient, and equitable market, and reducing inclusive risk based on the market’s broad objectives.

Outlining SEO’s main strategies in the current year, Eshqi said: “The first strategy is to use modern mechanisms to increase public monitoring of the entities offering shares in the market; the second strategy will be to develop regulatory tools in a preventive manner and in line with market development.”

According to the official, the third strategy is to amend the market’s rules and regulations to increase justice and accountability, while the fourth strategy will be strengthening the medium- and small-scale level financing through new mechanisms.

Facilitating the processes and developing the infrastructure for attracting and managing capital in the market, along with engineering the media mechanism to provide the shareholders with up-to-date information are the fifth and sixth strategies, he said.

The last strategy is to re-engineer the new generation of technical infrastructure with the aim of increasing security, sustainability, and ease of access.

Eshqi further noted that based on the strategies mentioned above, which have been developed taking into account the most important challenges of the capital market, various programs have been prepared.

EF/MA