Kofi Yamoah, GSE Boss
Managers of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) say the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) has performed poorly in recent times because of the harsh economic conditions in the country.
Kofi Yamoah, Managing Director of the GSE, indicated that current developments on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) show the Accra bourse will record poor performance for the second consecutive year.
In an interview with Citi Fm, an Accra-based radio station recently, he stated: “On the back of performances of these listed companies that have been subdued in recent times in the difficult macroeconomic environment, we have so many investors move from the equity market to the fixed market, and demand has also been very low as far as the equity market is concerned.”
According to him, “The equity market has been seriously down in 2016, this is the second year of negative territory for the equity market.”
In 2015, a similar performance was recorded when the Ghana Stock Exchange ended the year poorly, recording a negative growth of 25.60 percent return for investors in dollar terms.
The exchange in cedi terms for the same period also posted a negative 11.77 percent for investors.
In the period, the dismal performance of the exchange was attributed to the poor economic fundamentals driven largely by unstable currency, high inflation and interest rates, as well as the power outage which negatively affected manufacturing firms.
Nonetheless, the GSE boss said he was optimistic the market will pick up, as interest rates go down.
According to him, the confidence is viewed against the backdrop of signals of a stable currency and declining inflation and interest rates.
“Hopefully because interest and inflation rates are trending downwards plus stability in the foreign exchange front, I expect the companies that have been afflicted in this regard to perform better going into the future and then we can see some of these investors coming back to the equity market.”
By Samuel Boadi
samuel10gh@yahoo.com