By Aduragbemi Omiyale
Nigeria and Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commissions (SECs) have expressed their desire to extend the cross-border securities transactions between them to other countries in Africa, especially those in the West African region.
The Director-General of SEC Nigeria, Mr Lamido Yuguda, during a meeting with his Ghanaian counterpart, Mr Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh, said the aim is to provide an enabling environment for investors within the region.
He said given the enormous potential of cross-border listings, capital markets in the region are expected to develop a tool of cooperation that enables them to effectively police their respective markets and ensure that the standards of regulation set out by IOSCO are sustained and, where possible, improved upon.
“Without the readiness of all concerned, the lofty aims of the programme may as well continually remain a dream. It goes to say unequivocally that this goal can only be achieved seamlessly when all member states of ECOWAS come on board and actively commit to achieving the noble objectives of the enhanced collaborative structure that these agreements enable.
“On this note, the SEC Ghana and SEC Nigeria, desirous of achieving these ideals, have taken the lead by example and by driving this project in the sub-region while hopefully aiming to someday expand its coverage beyond the sub-regional frontiers onto other parts of the continent of Africa,” Mr Yuguda stated.
The SEC DG said that the enduring relationship between the two jurisdictions is more amplified by the fact that Ghana and Nigeria both have the largest markets in the West African sub-region, and it will only be good foresightedness that both countries seize the advantage of size and peculiarities, and explore viable areas of cooperation, even as we continue to work assiduously with other stakeholders to integrate our markets and provide greater opportunities for the economic prosperity of our peoples and our economies.
“We need to come closer and take deliberate steps to achieve bilateral cooperation. We are very keen on this relationship.
“There is a strong relationship between us, so we need to continue to nurture and grow it and create institutions that will help our people have better living standards. I hope we can achieve a lot by bringing our capital markets together. We need to make our institutions stronger as well as our economic activities.
“We require this collaboration in a bid to make accessing our markets as seamless as possible, easy for people to transfer assets, make investments and have confidence that the investments are protected in Ghana as they are in Nigeria and vice versa,” the Nigerian said.
In his remarks, Mr Tetteh commended the SEC DG, stating that Ghana and Nigeria can push forward in ways that will bring about the mutual benefits of leveraging the capital market, adding that the region needs to have their markets open to each other so that they can achieve more and then attain one big capital market.
Mr Tetteh expressed delight at the collaboration and pledged SEC Ghana’s commitment to continue supporting the initiative.
“Both Securities Commissions are ready to work together and develop the potentials of the capital market by examining issues and exploring ways to resolve them to make the capital markets work better.
“If you want to go far, it is better to go along with others, and that is why we always have discussions on cooperation in the capital market,” he stated.
