Lagos — A giant stride was taken yesterday towards the integration of West African capital markets, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by various country exchanges.

These include the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Ghana Stock Exchange, and BRVM, which is a regional exchange for Francophone West African countries including Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Guinea-Bissau.

The MoU was signed at the 13th Annual conference of the African Securities Exchanges Association which ended in Abuja yesterday.

The Director-General of the NSE, Prof. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, signed on behalf of Nigeria, the Managing Director of GSE, Kofi Yamoah, signed on behalf of Ghana; while the DG of BRVM, Jean Paul Gillet, signed for BRVM.

The trio expressed excitement over the agreement and pledged their commitment towards ensuring the integration of the West African region into a common stock exchange.

They said the modalities and time frame for the realisation of the project would be worked out at the first meeting of the technical committee that will be held January.

Explaining more on the MoU, Okereke-Onyiuke, who is the new President of ASEA, said it signified the commitment of the West African sub-region to actually integrate the market and trading system.

She said the NSE had been collaborating with the GSE on the integration over the years, while there has been a little challenge with BRVM due to language problem.

"But thank God, we have succeeded and agreed to work together. With the BRVM comprising eight Francophone countries, we can now say that we have fully integrated West Africa sub region when it comes to capital market; even though Liberia and Sierra Leone are not here."

Okereke-Onyiuke however explained that all the countries will keep their identities, saying what they are integrating is system, laws, trading process and clearing and settlement system.

"What we are integrating are system, laws, currency of trading and process of trading, clearing and settlement. Every country will keep its identity but will ask the countries to amend their investments laws. As this integration is going we are also carrying regulators along just to make minor adjustments on their investments laws to accommodate and facilitate the trading," she said.

Listing the benefits of the integration, the NSE boss, said the benefits are for the whole region.

"We are trying to integrate all the companies especially multinationals. If a company is listed on one of the exchanges, with the integration, the shares can be traded in all the countries. You do not have to meet the listing requirements of the different countries before listing on the exchanges. It takes a lot of time and money. So it is like getting the cost of eight countries for the price of one," she said.

She added that the integration will also help to develop the region because as it is like just Nigerian doing everything.

"But when we bring the younger countries on the same platform with Nigeria, there will no longer be separate countries in terms of statistics. It will now be regional exchange statistics you will not say Nigeria has done several trillions and Ivory Coast has only done so billions;

"With this, investors both local and foreign will take our markets even more seriously because they would be they would be looking at bulk market now. Also their companies that are coming will see the advantage in regional listing," she said.