'Nowhere in the world are stock markets left to control themselves,' Lorenzino

Economy Minister Hernán Lorenzino defended the new bill calling for larger government intervention in the capital market by assuring that “nowhere in the world markets control and sanction themselves.”

According to Lorenzino, through the bill, which will soon be sent to Congress for debate, the National Stock Market Committee (CNV) “will run controls and align the stock market with what is happening in the world.”

“This decision represents an important step towards institutionalizing the changes we’ve introduced in the last few years. It is related to the Law 17,811, which was passed during the 1968 dictatorship and is now outdated,” he explained.

“This is something we’re doing in order to update our stock market, which clearly has not had the role that it has in other places of the world, when it comes to channeling public savings towards more productive activities.”

“The capital market should have never lost that function,” he added.

The bill expands the CNV’s power to make more flexible those mechanisms that allow companies to go public.

The goal is to have those funds “go towards small and medium-sized businesses, construction of affordable housing and infrastructure,” he concluded.