The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) has sought assistance from the World Bank to upgrade its capital market surveillance system to international standards.

Khondoker Rashed Maqsood, chairman of the stock market regulator, sought the assistance during a meeting with a delegation of the international financial institution at the BSEC office in the capital yesterday.

Briefing journalists after the meeting, Maqsood said the BSEC talked with the WB on several important issues, including good governance and surveillance systems.

"We have focused on how we can improve our surveillance team. Apart from this, we have talked about the governance system of the capital market," he added.

Farzana Lalarukh, a commissioner of the BSEC, said the regulator has been working with a weak surveillance system, which was never upgraded since it was installed in 2012.

"It should be upgraded immediately," she said.

"To turn our surveillance system into one of international standards, we have sought assistance from the World Bank," she said.

The BSEC had incorporated InstantWatch, an automatic market transaction surveillance and compliance platform widely used in Europe, of Swedish company Trapets into its own surveillance network at the end of 2012.

The development and installation of the software was under a project co-funded by the government and Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The installation and implementation of the surveillance software within the BSEC was also a precondition for the release of $30 crore in assistance from the ADB under the second phase of its capital market development programme.

Regarding governance, Lalarukh said they would start by first focusing on the BSEC itself.

The five-member World Bank delegation was led by Niraj Verma, practice manager for long-term finance of the World Bank Group.

Md Mohsin Chowdhury and Md Ali Akbar, commissioners of the BSEC, were also present at the event.