TEHRAN- In a ceremony on Sunday, Iran celebrates the 50th anniversary of establishing its capital market.

Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Masoud Karbasian, Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Governor Valiollah Seif, Head of Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) Shapour Mohammadi, and Central Insurance of Iran President Abdolnaser Hemmati, besides a number of directors and those active in the capital market attended the ceremony.

Addressing the ceremony, the head of SEO underlined that today benefitting from financial instruments rather than stocks is not a dream anymore, Shada news agency reported.

“We have 585 bourse companies and near 600 financial entities at present and the number of trades at the stock market has risen,” Mohammadi told the press on the sidelines of the ceremony.

He put the value of trades in the stock market at 1.9 quadrillion rials (about $41.94 billion) in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20, 2017) and expressed hope that the figure will reach 2.15 quadrillion rials (about $47.64 billion) in this year.

Finance minister, for his part, said: “We have two strategies of more capacity for capital market development and facilitation of attracting financial sources through capital market on agenda.”

Putting emphasis on the necessity of using micro investments in the capital market, Karbasian said: “We should expand people’s presence in the stock exchange market for more attraction of micro investments to the capital market.”

Addressing the same ceremony, CBI governor said transparency is undoubtedly one of the definite requisites for development and promotion of capital market and announced the central bank’s readiness for cooperation with the Finance Ministry and SEO for creating more transparency in the capital market.

MA