The Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) has stated that they are working on the digitalisation of securities investing and other relevant market operations with the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC).
This was disclosed during the Business morning show on ChannelsTV, by NGX Chief Executive Officer, Temi Popoola, according to The SUN.
Popoola, who talked about The Exchange’s journey in 60 years, said that NGX has seen tremendous expansion, both in view of the number of now listed securities as well as the categories of listed securities and commercial activity.
He explained that in the next few months the growth of NGX’s domestic participation was a testament to Nigeria’s financial capacity as a whole and said that The Exchange is designed to create increased local participation and attract investment by improving the macroeconomic environment as local participation increases.
According to Popoola, The Exchange is synchronized with the SEC to digitize the market and ensure investors can quickly purchase and sell stocks.
He said, “I would firstly say that the apex regulator, SEC, is taking a strong lead in trying to address this and NGX is in support of this initiative. It will take time for the capital market to get to this stage but a lot of work is being done on this and of course one needs to understand that the structure- make up of our market is involved in that process from start to finish. Over the course of the next few months, we are likely to see a structure in place to move us in a positive direction to address this.”
He also revealed that The Exchange is looking at strategies as to how to attract more foreign capital.
“There are certain things within the control of the Exchange. First and foremost, the way foreign capital flows is, is that it does not like resistance and there has to be fungibility and so a lot of the foreign capital that comes in, starts from what I call the top down analysis in which the region, continent, country and decision to allocate capital is looked at. So these decisions tend to be economic broadly speaking.
“Investors also want to look at the quality of the companies and investments that they could make. This is the reason why you will find out that the exchange is very big on governance, rules and regulations and of course there are more operational things,” he added
