The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) today debunked the allegation that the National Code of Corporate Governance (NCCG) was the cause of economic recession currently rocking the country.
The Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer FRC, Mr Jim Obazee while presenting his welcome address at the occasion of the 13th Annual Financial Reporting Summit and dinner held in Lagos stated that NCCG was not the cause of recession, rather has the capacity to build confidence that could assist the economy’s normal recuperative mechanism to engage. “The FRC job in this period is to ensure that we are able promote confidence, to promote assurance, create an enabling environment whereby recuperative mechanism will begin to engage”
Highlighting the benefits of the code, Obazee note that NCCG would enhance Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) into the country among other benefits.
Obazee who maintained that investors would like to invest in any jurisdiction if they knew that they will be entitled to keep the reward thereafter noted that Nigeria economy would benefit from NCCG through its demand for enhanced transparency and accountability in financial reporting and mandatory corporate codes.
According to him, the theme of the summit, ‘National Code of Corporate Governance and New Audit Report: A paradigm Shift’ was apt especially this period when some unspoken questions were yearning for answers.
He cleared the air about the popular belief that the NCCG would be at the detriment of shareholders, even as he assured that the code was put in place to protect the minority shareholders, he said.
Speaking further, Obazee assured that NCCG could not impede the ease of doing business in the country adding that a good corporate governance code is a means of whereby a society could ensure that business were well organized, not only managed, to which investors and lenders both domestic and foreign could safely and confidently commit their funds.