Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) on Sunday announced waiving its share in sukuk and bonds trading commission starting from May 2023.
This step comes as part of the efforts to reduce costs on market participants in a way that enhances liquidity, increases competitiveness in the local market and expands domestic investors' base in government debt issues.
This will contribute to achieving the strategic objectives of Vision 2030 related to developing a diversified and effective financial sector to support the development of the economy and create an advanced capital market, the market regulator said in a statement.
By this decision, the CMA affirms its pledge to stimulate activities of debt instruments secondary market. This comes in line with the authority's strategic objective relevant to developing the sukuk and debt instruments market to boost its attractiveness to issuers and investors.
CMA hopes this resolution will contribute to stimulating issuers to list local currency-denominated sukuk and bonds in the Saudi debt instruments market and encouraging investors to trade such instruments in a way that will help to deepen the market and raise its liquidity.
This is along with diversifying finance choices before public and private sectors by creating a new asset class available for all investors’ segments.
In other news, CMA extended the deadline for Tadawul-listed insurance companies to disclose Q1 2023 financial statements until July 2.
In a statement on Sunday, the market regulator said the decision aims to support all capital market participants.
It was also driven by the challenges facing the insurance sector for applying International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 17 “Insurance Contracts", and the request received from the insurance executive committee to extend the deadline for disclosing the first-quarter results.
Trading on shares of any Tadawul-listed insurance services provider that has not disclosed Q1 2023 financial statements by July 2 will be suspended for one trading session following the end of the specified deadline. These stocks will restart trading on July 4 for 20 trading sessions.
Tadawul-listed insurance companies must disclose their interim financial statements during this period. Otherwise, their stocks will be re-suspended starting from Aug. 1, until they disclose the first-quarter results.
