Why Nigerian Need To Invest In Stocks Market
A stock broker, Mr. Balogun Francis, has stressed the need for Nigerians to invest more in the Nigerian stock exchanges.
Responding to questions from a newshunt in his Office, he made an overview of Nigeria stock exchange, stressing on the various improvement made so far over the years. Excerpts
Q: Do you think the Nigeria stock exchange has been able to sustained its mission statement?
A: The Nigerian stock exchange was established in 1968 and since then a lot of physical and technological transformation had taken place and the stock exchange is a yardstick at which economist use to measure the growth or decline in economic development.
The Nigerian stock exchange is one of the biggest in Africa and all the parameters are there for people to see. The Stock has been able to raise funds for the industrial sector, expand the economy and working strictly towards adhering to its mission statement.
Over the years efforts were made to minimize fraud among other irregular activities, the first step was the abolition of the manual approach and today the entire process is now automated and this has reduced fraud drastically.
A lot of critical transformations have taken place over the years, more importantly in the area of digital transformation and this has helped medium scale business to raise funds to expand their operations. And the overall effect of this in the economy has led to creation of more job opportunities while the economy keeps expanding.
The government needs to do more, by protecting the stock exchange so that investors will have more confidence in the sector. Government should formulate policies that will promote stock development, while risk management should be streamline.
Q: From your own point of view do you think there is a synergy between the Nigerian stocks exchange and the CBN?
A: Yes there is a synergy between the CBN and the Nigerian stock exchange, the CBN has looked inward and introduced some measures that have further enhanced investor's confidence and this include, the digitalization of the process, reducing it to three working days to process funds and other documentations, and also put in place regulations to prevent fraud among other impediments .
The CBN has also made us to understand that there is the need for recapitalization of commercial banks because projects funding requires high capital and if you look at the exchange rate which also has a lot of impact on the economy.
Therefore, there is the need for the recapitalization of commercial banks and it is a bold step to improve the economy of the country.
