By Chinwendu Obienyi

The Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) has said it is working with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to digitise securities investment and other market related transactions.

The Chief Executive Officer, NGX, Temi Popoola, disclosed this during the Business Morning Show on Channels Television recently. Popoola, who spoke on the journey of the exchange in 60 years, said that even though there have been few challenges, NGX has experienced a strong track of growth whether from the view of the number of securities listed now, the types of securities listed and types of business activity.

He explained that the increase in domestic participation on NGX in few months was a testament of the financial power of Nigeria as a whole while adding that the exchange will look to build local increased participation and at the same time, make sure that as the increase of the local participation continues, it is positioned to attract investments when the macroeconomic environment improves.

According to him, the exchange is in sync with the SEC to digitalise the market and make sure that investors can buy and sell securities easily.

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“I would firstly say that the apex regulator, SEC, is taking a strong lead in trying to address this and NGX is in support of this initiative. It will take time for the capital market to get to this stage but a lot of work is being done on this and of course one needs to understand that the structure- make up of our market is involved in that process from start to finish. Over the course of the next few months, we are likely to see a structure in place to move us in a positive direction to address this”, Popoola said.

He also revealed that the Exchange is looking at strategies as to how to attract more foreign capital.

“There are certain things within the control of the Exchange. First and foremost, the way foreign capital flows is, is that it does not like resistance and there has to be fungibility and so a lot of the foreign capital that comes in, starts from what I call the top down analysis in which the region, continent, country and decision to allocate capital is looked at. So these decisions tend to be economic broadly speaking.

Investors also want to look at the quality of the companies and investments that they could make. This is the reason why you will find out that the exchange is very big on governance, rules and regulations and of course there are more operational things.