The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Lamido Yuguda has said the commission reduced its workforce by almost 30 per cent disclosing that at the end of the first half of 2022, it recorded a surplus of about N2.5billion.

Speaking at the 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework/Fiscal Strategy Paper, MTEF/FSP interactive session with the House of Representatives Committee on Finance in Abuja, yesterday, Yuguda stated that 2020 and 2021 were particularly difficult times for the Commission as it was running a deficit.
According to him “When we came on board, it was very difficult but we assured the National Assembly that we were going to take certain actions to make this deficit a thing of the past and our story this year is that we have actually turned the corner.

 “If you look at our 2021 and 2020, compare with the 2022 budget and the 6 months in 2022 you will see that there is an actual improvement in the way we manage the finances of the Commission.

“It shows our budget for 2022 and the actual out time for the first half of that year. You can see that we projected a deficit of N1.6 billion, but as at the end of the first half, we have a surplus of about N2.5billion.”

He stated that the presentation is a summary of the kind of efforts the current Management has made over the past few years to position the Commission on the path of fiscal sustainability.

Yuguda told the Members that the SEC has so far carried out its promise to reduce the top heavy structure in the Commission by offering some top personnel a voluntary exit package.

He said, “Mr. Chairman we were top heavy and we said before this committee that we had a plan to offer a voluntarily early exit to some of our top personnel and I am happy to report that at the end of last year we offered this scheme and quite a number of our staff took the offer and we were able to substantially reduce our workforce by almost 30per cent.