Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Mr. Ekow Afedzie The Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) Mr. Ekow Afedzie, has said the pandemic did not negatively affect the operations of the exchange because measures were put in place as far back as 15 years ago for such development.
He revealed on the Business Focus on TV3 Monday, July 5 that the right infrastructure that enables its staff to operate without going to the office was instituted by the management even when covid was nowhere close to humanity.
The operations of several businesses were negatively impacted by the outbreak of the virus.
But Mr. Afedzie told the sit-in-host of the show Etornam Sey that “Largely as an exchange, 10 to 15 years ago we had put in place certain infrastructure that enables us to operate without really coming to the office. So we didn’t really have a serious negative impact on our operations. We still operated normally.
He further said the buoyant trend witnessed recently indicates the confidence of investors in the local economy.
Ghana’s stock market has emerged as the best performing market on the African continent after it returned about 36% in dollar terms for investors.
MTN Ghana (87.50%), Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (43.33%), Societe Generale (43.75%), and GCB Bank (33.33%) are the best-performing stocks on the stock market so far this year.
Mr. Afedzie attributed this performance to the prudent measures introduced by the exchange.
“It just tells you that investors are beginning to have some confidence in the market and therefore the market is beginning to do well.
A few things have happened. Generally speaking, as an exchange we set up three markets. We set up what we call the main equity market which deals with shares of the big companies like Unilever, Standard Chartered.
“Then we set up what we call the alternative market for the small-medium size companies.“Then we set up the bond market six years ago to deal with all the fixed income securities, securities where you buy and they tell you will get an interest every six months or so.“And the country as a whole has gone through some turbulent times as a result of the COVID then people started looking out for where they can put their money that is safe. So they started looking at the bond market which is a virtually risk-free market.“That is why you see the bond market growing very well. More people […]