This is about 10 times the value of transactions on the exchange throughtout year 2000.
Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, director general of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), made this known while speaking at the just-concluded yearly conference for CEOs and directors of quoted companies in collaboration with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) of South Africa.
She said that there were 202 companies listed on the floor of NSE, with a market capitalization of N3.8 trillion (US$30 billion) as at end of August 2006.
She described quoted companies as engines of economic life which constitute an important segment of the capital market community and that of the economy.
” In 2005, the 20 most capitalized companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange employed about 50,000 persons, generated more than N900 billion in turnover, and paid a total sum in excess of N40 billion as tax on profit”, she said.
She noted that government was implementing an economic policy founded on liberalization, and the economy was increasingly integrating with the world economy through higher application of information technology.
In a paper delivered at the forum, Godwin Obaseki, managing director of Afrinvest West Africa Limited, pointed out that Nigeria had been included in the “Next 11″ by Goldman Sachs economic research of 2005 despite facing “serious fundamental weakness”. “Next 11″ is a set of developing countries that Goldman Sachs sees as having the capacity to become important globally.
Obaseki identified the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS) as a road map Nigeria had set to reach its global importance.
According to him, “NEEDS is its vision of a Nigeria with a new set of values and principles, which will facilitate the achievements of national goals of wealth creation, employment generation and poverty reduction”.
Specifically, he said that reform programs of NEEDS include government and institutional reforms that entail public sector reforms, privatization and liberalization, good governance, transparency and anticorruption as well as quality service delivery by government agencies.

culled from Business Day newspaper

Comments