GSE registers steady growth

Consistent decline in inflation and a stabilised Cedi helped pushed the volume of shares traded at the country's stock market from 97milllion in 2009 to 330 million in 2010 at the close of the market for last year.
In per cent terms however, the Ghana Stock Exchange all share index gained 32 per cent,  far higher than treasury instruments and interest rates on bank deposits.
The Chairman of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Mr Frank Adu disclosed this to the press at a press soiree organised by the GSE last Friday.
He added that the 330 million shares traded within the year under review had a face value  of  GH¢151 million as against  GH¢74 the market recorded in 2009 .This  represents a 104 percentage increase.
However,  Mr Adu noted "the value traded for last year, despite the huge increase represented only 41 per cent of the record level of GH¢ 365 million of the total value of shares traded in 2008".
Giving the performance of the GSE for 2010, the Chairman said the year under review  "was on balance a difficult one for Ghana's  Stock Market" adding that the GSE had recovered but "on a weak and slow" pace since "remnants of the difficulties lingered on".
Explaining further, the Chairman said though 2010 saw a consistent decline in inflation and a stronger Cedi in the global currency market, interest rates in the country remained at a "relatively high rate for business growth".
On corporate and government bonds, Mr Adu said "the value traded in 2010 was GH¢453 million compared to the GH¢17 million traded in 2009".
He noted that the capitalisation of the market, which was a measure of the value of all the listed companies put together, amounted to GH¢20.12 billion, a 26 per centage increase from 2009's GH¢15.94billion value.
According to him, the significant appreciation in prices of several securities and the issuance of additional shares by some listed companies both helped push the market capitalisation to inch above the Gh¢20billion mark.
On the way forward, Mr Adu said the GSE would "reposition the exchange much more stronger in the country's financial sector, grow existing businesses, and develop new ones".
"In the next decade, we want to fully utilise our new system to bring more companies to the market so that Ghana will be in a stronger position to compete as an investment destination", Mr Adu added.
He noted that the GSE was working to ensure that the exchange becomes the preferred choice  for "corporate Ghana in raising capital for investments".
The GSE Chairman also thanked the media for its contribution to issues of the exchange and further called on them to "devote more attention from politics to educate the populace on matters of finance and economics".
"The media, he said should "join players of the stock exchange to impress on policy makers to adopt a local content listing policy or legislation" as away of encouraging more companies in other sectors to list on the market.
With the GSE's recently automated systems, Mr Adu said  we now have a "modest  but modern Information Technology (IT) centre" , adding that trading activities at the exchange can now be recovered upon disasters.