DHAKA, Feb 02, 2024 (BSS) - Women are playing a significant role in capital raising activities for the country's trade and business by operating nearly 25 percent of the Beneficiary Owners (BO) accounts of the capital market.

According to the Central Depository of Bangladesh Limited (CDBL) data, the current number of women and men investors in the country's capital market is 1,762,162. The number of male investors was 1,331,569 while the number of female investors 430,593 on February 2 of this year in two types of BO accounts.

"We put so much emphasis on women's empowerment in this country, and such empowerment can only be materialised with financial independence," Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) Commissioner Dr Rumana Islam told BSS.

She informed that BSEC has a department dedicated to creating financial awareness about the capital market known as the Financial Literary Department (FLD).

"The aim and purpose of FLD are through different training sessions, workshops, seminars, and round-table discussions to make people aware of how the capital market works, what are the different options to invest, the risks associated with those options, what the benefits of those options in the short term and long term and most importantly the 'dos' and 'do nots' before an individual decides to invest in the capital market," she added.

She mentioned, "Our FLD repeatedly emphasises the fact that there are risks in the capital market, and one should be fully aware of the pros and cons before they decide to invest in the capital market."

"FLD has a particular focus on female investors. Our experience shows that one of the reasons why women in our country feel reluctant to participate in the capital market is their financial illiteracy. With this financial illiteracy comes misconceptions and fears about the capital market," she added.

To overcome this, Rumana said, BSEC arranges free training sessions specially designed for women investors on a regular basis.

Similar kinds of training sessions are also arranged in collaboration with other financial institutions and subsidiary bodies under BSEC, she added.

Over the past few years, BSEC has successfully conducted a financial literacy program at divisional headquarters and district levels. In those programs, a special session is always decided only for the women investors, where BSEC invites the relevant stakeholders, representatives from the women's chamber of commerce, women's associations, business hubs and successful women business leaders at the local level to share their stories of struggles, strategies, and success.

Rumana informed that their stories and experiences inspire and give crucial guidance to potential women investors.

She said BSEC aims to encourage and motivate potential women investors in different parts of the country to participate in the capital market.

Last year, BSEC organised a special program for women entrepreneurs with the goal of making them aware of how they can benefit from the capital market for raising funds for their ventures. This program, which was designed exclusively for women, concentrated on how the financial markets may support their ideas for starting their own enterprises and assisting small ones in expanding, how it can direct investor savings onto firms so they may be used profitably and stimulate the production of jobs, infrastructure, and innovation, which in turn will propel economic growth.

Apart from FLD, Rumana, the first female Commissioner of BSEC, said BSEC also closely works with two associated institutions, namely Bangladesh Institute of Capital Market (BICM) and Bangladesh Academy of Securities Market (BASM), to improve financial literacy in the country.

She said the core, game-changing promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is "leave no one behind," or LNOB.

"At BSEC, we also firmly believe that women investors should not be left behind in the capital market. We can only ensure that women investors are not left behind in the capital market by making them well-equipped with the financial literature," she added.

She said, "As long as we can ensure financial literacy for women investors, it will work as a catalyst to abolish discrimination and exclusion and lessen the vulnerabilities and inequities that impede women investors' ability to reach their full potential to participate in the capital market. Accordingly, our FLD, BICM, and BASM have a special focus on women investors."

Through BSEC's different financial literacy programs and its initiatives, Rumana, also a professor of the Dhaka University Law Department, hoped that the more significant number of women investors in the country's capital market would come in the near future.