As Nigeria marked its 53rd Independence anniversary on Tuesday, stakeholders in the country’s capital market said the Securities and Exchange Commission and Nigerian Stock Exchange needed to intensify efforts to increase the depth of the market.

Market operators, shareholders and experts, who spoke to our correspondent, all said the focus should be on attracting more listings to the market.

The President, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers, Mr. Ariyo Olushekun, said the major focus should be to further develop the market by improving its depth.

He said, “We need to work towards improving on the number of people participating in the market. Five million people against a population of 170 million; the proportion is too little. We need to work very hard at improving that.”

According to the NSE, there are currently about 258 listed securities on the Exchange.

Olushekun, however, said the figure was too small as well, considering the size of the country and its potential.

He said the listing drive should target companies in critical sectors of the economy such as telecoms, oil and gas and agriculture sectors.

“The structure of the market should be such that it should be able to finance anything or project of any size. If we fashion out a way to pull every N5,000 to N100,000 that people in the rural areas have both in the informal sector and the formal sector of the economy together, the fund can be channelled towards economic and developmental purposes,” he added.

Commenting on the growth of the capital market over time, the Managing Director, Enterprise Stockbrokers Plc, Mr. Rotimi Fakayejo, explained that the market had performed creditable well, stressing that if the country had recorded a similar performance, there would have been a greater reason to celebrate.

He said, “I think for the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the Nigerian Capital Market, there has been a good measure of improvement over the years, relative to the general improvement in the economy and the country at large.

“I think if the Nigerian Capital Market were to be used as a benchmark for the development of Nigeria, Nigeria has done well. Going forward, the stock exchange is moving at a faster pace than any other stock exchange within the Sub-Saharan region and I believe that if the kind of development we are seeing here is being seen in the larger economy and the nation, then, definitely we would say that Nigeria has arrived.”

He, however, said while the NSE had made a great progress in terms of technology, it had not achieved much in terms of increasing the market depth.

As a result, he said the $1tn capitalisation target the NSE aimed to hit in the next few years would be difficult to achieve.

 ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…“Basically, there is a need for the Exchange to work more to attract more companies,” Fakayejo said.

The Chief Executive Officer, Trust Yield Securities Limited, Mr. Ola Yussuff, said there was also a need for Nigerians to celebrate the capital market.

He said, “There is a huge need to celebrate the Nigerian Stock Exchange now. Look at the capitalisation of the Exchange now, it is over N11tn (it was at one point N13tn).

“The country’s annual budget is only N4.5tn; so, you are having on the NSE an equivalent of over three years of the Nigerian budget. Therefore, the capitalisation of the NSE represents a huge chunk of Nigeria’s resource.”

Nevertheless, like other stakeholders, he said there was the need for the NSE to “spread its tentacles because there are still areas of the economy that are not properly represented on the Exchange.”

For instance, he explained that though the oil and gas sector represents the major stream of income for the country, only a few players in the sector are listed.

He added that the strength of the sector and companies in the sector as well as the power companies should be reflected on the NSE.

The National Coordinator, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Mr. Henry Nwosu, called for consistency in policies for the Exchange.

According to him, a situation where a new leadership of the NSE or SEC means that the policies of the previous leadership, whether good or bad, will be discarded is not good for the growth of the capital market.

He added that there were also some levels of experimenting, which was bad for the market.

Nwosu, who stressed that the NSE ought to have been the leading Exchange in Africa, said, “Once we are able to stop all those experiments, I believe the Nigerian Stock Exchange would be better off.”

Source: Punch (by Simon Ejembi)