New Delhi: Blaming the nominal inflow of household savings into stock market on lack of confidence of retail investors, a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) has recommended strict accountability by listed companies through certification by their chief executives, which if proved incorrect should attract criminal liability under the law.

The committee which probed the stock scam and the freeze on Unit Trust of India's (UTI) US-64 scheme said it has been observed that poor disclosures at the time of public issue and manipulative pricing of the 'issues' by the companies often results in robbing the uninformed investor.

"The main reason for such insignificant flow can be attributed to lack of confidence of the retail investors in the capital market," the report tabled in Parliament on December 19 said.

It said in order to ensure that investors are well informed, it is not only very important to have full disclosures but also to ensure that these are authentic.

"The committee recommend that the managing director/chief executive officer and at least, one director of the company must certify all disclosures made by the listed companies to be true and correct and in case the same are found to be false these officials must attract criminal liability under the law," the report said.

PTI