Equities Market will recover this year – NSE Boss

The Nigerian equities market is set experience a positive performance this year after recording three consecutive years of decline. The market ended 2016 with a decline of 6.17 per cent, which was an improvement on the 17.4 per cent recorded in 2015.

However, speaking on the market outlook for 2017 in Lagos yesterday, the Chief Exchange Officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Oscar Onyema said investors should expect a positive performance this year.

According to him, the capital market is a subsector of the Nigerian economy and the World Bank has projected that the economy will recover from its recession in 2017 with a modest growth of 0.6 per cent. Onyema, therefore said based on the positive forecast and the initiatives being in place by the NSE, investors should be optimism about recovery of the market in 2017.

He said the Nigerian capital market will do a better job at promoting its unique value proposition to both global and domestic investors.

We expect investors to continue to keep a close eye on the divergence between the interbank FX rate and other exchange rates in the country. Accordingly, a convergence of FX rates in the country and the performance of listed corporates will determine the level of market activity in the short term,” he said.

Onyema disclosed that the NSE will take an adaptive approach to strategy execution in 2017, noting that in the immediate future, the NSE will focus on achieving its goal of becoming a more agile and demutualised exchange and will fast track efforts towards developing innovative products such as exchange traded derivatives to provide investors with tools to better weather economic realities in 2017.

“We intend to strengthen our thought leadership efforts with policymakers to drive policies that will free up the system and promote the ease of doing business in Nigeria. We believe that incentive schemes for sectors of the economy that can support a pivot to export led economy will be beneficial, and systematic removal of impediments to doing business and therefore reduction of leakages will attract private sector investments,” Onyema said.

[ThisDay]