April 26, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 08, 1428

ISLAMABAD, April 25: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has been elected as the member of the executive committee of the Corporate Register Forum (CRF), a global association for administration of corporate and securities registers.The SECP was elected as member of the executive committee in the annual general meeting of CRF held at Kuala Lumpur and Singapore on 16-20 April jointly hosted by the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, Singapore (ACRA).

The SECP Commissioner (Company Law Division) Rashid I. Malik represented Pakistan in the AGM. Some 67 delegates from 27 jurisdictions attended the meeting. Other members of the executive committee, which were elected, include England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, while Malaysia and Singapore were selected as honorary members hosting the AGM.

“Our jurisdiction (SECP) has contested and was accordingly elected as one of the committee’s members,” an official announcement issued here on Wednesday said.

It stated that this was indeed a great honour for the SECP to become a member of executive committee as its representative from a developing country like Pakistan.

The CRF-2007 provided an excellent opportunity to the member countries to leverage upon expertise and experience of member countries and for mutual exchange and sharing of ideas.

The main focus of the forum remained the evolution of corporate registers, challenges and opportunities in response to the dynamics of the business environment and the need to address the challenges and responses in meeting the expectations of the business community.

Other important areas of discussion included innovation of corporate services, updates on jurisdictional registration systems and corporate law reforms, harnessing the power of information technology, product development and the use of integrated corporate information and the role of corporate registrars in today’s world as a facilitator, regulator or promoter.

The representation of SECP in the CRF-2007 remained extremely useful and is expected to bring fruitful results in view of its present move towards provision of e-services in its operations as a corporate registry and improvement of corporate service delivery in realisation of the challenges posed by new technologies, the statement added.