NSE seek incentives to support export-led sectors of the economy

The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) said it intend to engage government by strengthening its thought leadership efforts with policymakers to drive polices that will free up the system and promote the ease of doing business in Nigerian.

The Chief Executive Officer of the NSE Mr Oscar Onyema disclosed this in Lagos at the 2016 Market Recap and Outlook for 2017.

According to Onyema “We believe that incentive schemes for sectors of the economy that can support a pivot to export led economy will be beneficial, and systematic removal of impediments to doing business and therefore reduction of leakages will attract private sector investments.”

The NSE boss while outlining some key market agenda for 2017 noted that cognizant of the ever evolving economic realities on ground, the NSE will take an adaptive approach to strategy execution in 2017.

He pointed out that in the immediate future, the NSE will focus on achieving its goal of becoming a more agile and demutualized exchange and will fast track efforts towards developing innovative products such as exchange traded derivatives to provide investors with tools to better weather economic realities in 2017.

He said from a capital market liquidity standpoint, “we will enhance our cross-border integration efforts via African Securities Exchange Association’s (ASEA) African Exchange Linkage Project (AELP) model and the West African Capital Market Integration (WACMI) program.

“We will also continue our engagement efforts with the Government to promote the listing of privatized state owned entities (SOEs), as well as engage with the Private sector issuers for listings across all of our product categories.

Onyema said the NSE anticipate that secondary market activity will be challenged initially as the impact of various policy measures work their way through the system.

In his words “However, we expect to see a revival of supplementary listings, return of the new issuance market, and potentially one IPO since the equity market is a forward indicator of the economy. We are cautiously optimistic, as consensus estimates suggest a moderate recovery for Nigeria in 2017, provided that policy makers implement the right combination of policy measures”.