The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) says it expects much more improvement in secondary market activity in 2017, on the basis of the positive macro-economic environment.

The Managing Director of the GSE, Mr Kofi Yamoah, said the improvement in the macro-economic environment that had seen inflation and interest rates trending downwards and the cedi relatively stable this year offered hope for the Exchange.

He said, “We count on the fact that the macro-economic environment would continue to be good this way and on the basis of that we expect much more improvement as far as secondary market activity is concerned.”

Mr Yamoah made this known in an interview after the Exchange’s 27th Annual General Meeting in Accra. 

On the listing front, Mr Yamoah said not much headway had been made to date but expected a number of companies to formalise their processes and steps towards listing in due course. 

“The only unfortunate aspect is that the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t have its full complement of commissioners in place and we hope that would also come sooner than later so that we can have the full gamut in place for the second half of 2017,” he said.

Mr Yamoah encouraged multinationals in Ghana to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange to make their customers and Ghanaians generally part of their business activities by giving them some of those shares through public offers. 

This, he said, would help the Exchange to have a great and wider sectoral representation of economic activities as far as the exchange is concerned. 

“There are 33 banks and more than 26 insurance companies. But so far we have only two insurance companies and about seven banks. We want that to improve so that when you talk about the Exchange and the indices and so on it becomes a much broader representation of economic activity,” he said.

On the restoration of the capital gains tax incentive, Mr Yamoah said it was a welcome idea for the Exchange as it would help not only the retail investors but also the non-resident investors who participate in the market.

Touching on the West Africa Market Integration project, Mr Yamoah said the idea was to gradually ensure that the Exchanges in the sub-region were opened to all issuers so that a public offer could be marketed in all the West African Countries while in the same way an investors can participate in markets across the sub-region.

“The whole idea is to open up to West Africa to all issuers, open up West Africa to all investors and hopefully from our individuals’ small sizes we can have a bigger pool of West Africa market,” he said.

Mr Yamoah said the 2nd Phase of the project involved granting autonomy to dealers to be able to trade directly in the market in another jurisdiction. 

In the first phase the dealers had to go through a dealer in the other market. 

He said the second phase was to make sure that the dealer could satisfy certain additional requirements so that he could participate directly in markets in order jurisdictions.

Mr Albert Essien, Chairman of the GSE Council, said despite the economic and market conditions in 2016, the Exchange recorded a surplus of GH¢5.38 million compared to GH¢2.55 million in 2015.

On market performance, Mr Essien said the GSE Composite Index, which measured the performance of the entire market, ended 2016 with a negative 15.33 per cent on the back of subdued performance by listed banks.

The volume of shares traded stood at 253 million shares valued at GH¢242 million compared to 246 million shares valued at GH¢247 million in 2015.

The Market capitalisation of listed securities at the end of December 2016 was GH¢52.7 billion compared to GH¢57.1 billion in 2015, representing a decrease of 7.75 per cent.

Also, domestic market capitalisation fell by 2.75 per cent at GH¢ 10.9 billion compared to GH¢11.2 billion in 2015.