The federal Cabinet has appointed Barrister Mehmood Mandviwalla as the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan’s (SECP) Policy Board after six months.
It has also accepted the resignation of Barrister Mandviwalla’s predecessor, Syed Masoud Naqvi, who was nominated for the position in May 2020 and had submitted his resignation on 23 June for personal reasons.
Prior to this, Barrister Mandviwalla had served as Sindh’s Interim Minister for Law Sindh in 2013. His appointment has been almost half a year in the making and laid the groundwork for the approval of the Commission’s budget for the year 2021-22.
The SECP’s annual budget for the current fiscal year could not be approved because the policy board had been working without a chairperson, because of which finances and expenditures were handled on a makeshift basis.
Fundamentally, the SECP Policy Board can have up to 11 members, with five ex-officio members and six private-sector members. The first private-sector expert to lead the board, Professor Khalid Mirza, has served before Naqvi in November 2018. Interestingly, before this, the role was normally assigned to the Finance Secretary.
