Allan Kisia
26 October 2006
Nairobi — Companies in East Africa will in 2008 enjoy cross-border listing on the three stock exchanges, it has been announced.
This means that shares of all East African companies would be listed at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) and Dar-es-salaam Stock Exchange.
The chairman of the NSE, Mr Jimnah Mbaru said the institutions had already initiated discussions aimed at merging the exchanges.
"When this is done, we shall have a single stock exchange for Kenya and Uganda, known as the East African Stock Exchange," he said.
Mbaru also revealed that in the next two years the NSE ownership would be separated from its management to allow the public room to own a part of it.
"We intend to demutualise the stock exchange whereby NSE will also list its shares and anybody can own part of it," he said.
Mbaru made the remarks during the official inauguration of the automated trading systems by President Kibaki at NSE on Wednesday.
In future, he said, the bourses will set up a single Central Depository System Corporation serving Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda owned by the three stock exchanges.
At the opportune time, he added, "We will look upon the Government to help us achieve these objectives."
Next year, Mbaru said, NSE would set up an over-the-counter market to enable smaller and medium size companies to access cheap capital.
Within the next two years, he added, NSE will set up a commodities exchange modeled along the Chicago Commodities Exchange where produce like tea, coffee, flowers, cotton, maize, cotton and others will be traded.
He urged the Government to ask the heads of key infrastructure based parastatals to consider issuing corporate bonds to raise capital for infrastructure development.
Mbaru suggested that the Government offload at least 20 per cent of its shareholdings in mobile service provider Safaricom as early as next year.
"You can imagine what joy it would be for Safaricom subscribers to know that whenever they make a call, they are also making profit," he added.
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