Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE)
The Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Kofi Yamoah, says the Accra Bourse raised GH¢2 billion in 2018.
Mr. Yamoah disclosed this to journalists on Thursday in Accra when he presented a review of the stock market’s performance in 2018.
According to him, GSE made significant gains in 2018, notable among them being the entry of Ghana’s number one telecom operator MTN.
He explained that MTN reached a record high in the capitalization of GH¢1.1 billion on the stock market, with 128,000 shareholders to break the record 80,000 shareholders set by GCB in 2016.
He stated that “on a number of counts, we were far ahead in terms of positives. Firstly, we managed to get the biggest telecom player to come to the market to raise a record amount as far as the Public Offer is concerned GH¢1.1 billion. If you add it to the additional listings that came, then in 2018, a total of GH¢2 billion was raised in this market. That’s a record as far as this market is concerned.”
Mr. Yamoah added that “we had a 128,000 investors applying under MTN, that’s also a record in itself. And so we expect that this number will enable the market to have much more activities as far as security trading is concerned.”
“In due course, we want to apply the principle of mobile money trading technology not only to MTN shares but also to other securities that are listing and hopefully that will bring greater activities in the securities on the market and better price discounts.”
“So in a nutshell, 2018 was on a good side because of a major new sector joined, GH¢659 million was traded as against GH¢547 million for 2017.”
Interest
According to him, GSE Composite Index in 2018 was flat at -0.29 percent and the GSE Financial Index lost 6.79 percent as compared to positive 52.73 percent and 49.51 percent respectively in 2017.
He indicated that there was “strong interest from corporates for the issuance of fixed income securities during 2018.”
But notwithstanding the gains, Mr. Yamoah highlighted some challenges GSE faced in 2018.
He said the focus on the banks’ recapitalisation by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to clean up the banking sector led to losses on the stock market.
Mr. Yamoah added that the relatively high interest rates on treasury bills at 13.35 percent at the end of 2017 closed the year 2018 at 14.59 percent.
By Melvin Tarlue & Mohammed Brimah