By Tony Obiechina, Abuja

Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mr. Lamido Yuguda has said that the aim of the West African capital markets integration programme is the creation of an enabling environment for cross-border securities transactions and the integration of all capital markets jurisdictions in the ECOWAS region.

Yuguda stated this during a meeting with the Director General of SEC Ghana, Rev Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh in Accra

According to Yuguda, in view of the enormous potentials of cross border listings, capital markets in the region are expected to develop a tool of cooperation that enables them to effectively police their respective markets and ensure that the standards of regulation set out by IOSCO are sustained, and where possible, improved upon.

He said, “Without the readiness of all concerned, the lofty aims of the programme may as well continually remain a dream. It goes to say, unequivocally, that this goal can only be achieved seamlessly when all member states of ECOWAS come on board and actively commit to achieving the noble objectives of the enhanced collaborative structure that these nature of agreements enable.

“On this note, the SEC Ghana and SEC Nigeria, desirous of achieving these ideals, have taken the lead by example and by driving this project in the sub-region while hopefully aiming to someday expand its coverage beyond the sub-regional frontiers onto other parts of the continent of Africa”.

The SEC DG said that the enduring relationship between thetwo jurisdictions is more amplified by the fact that Ghana and Nigeria both have the largest markets in the West African sub-region and it will only be good foresightedness that both countries seize the advantage of size and peculiarities, and explore viable areas of cooperation, even as we continue to work assiduously with other stakeholders to integrate our markets and provide greater opportunities for the economic prosperity of our peoples and our economies.

“We need to come closer and take deliberate steps to achieve bilateral co-operation. We are very keen on this relationship. There is a strong relationship between us so we need to continue to nurture and grow it and create institutions that will help our people have better living standards. I hope we can achieve a lot by bringing our capital markets together. We need to make our institutions stronger as well as our economic activities.

“We require this collaboration in a bid to make the process of accessing our markets as seamless as possible, easy for people to transfer assets, make investments and have confidence that the investments are protected in Ghana as they are in Nigeria and vice versa” Yuguda stated.

In his remarks, the DG of SEC Ghana, Rev Daniel OgbarmeyTetteh commended the SEC DG stated that Ghana and Nigeria can push forward in ways that will bring about the mutual benefits of leveraging the capital market adding that the region needs to have their markets open to each other so that they can achieve more and then attain one big capital market.

Tetteh expressed delight on the collaboration and pledged the commitment of SEC Ghana to continue to support the initiative.

He said, “Both Securities Commissions are ready to work together and develop the potentials of the capital market by examining issues and exploring ways to resolve them to make the capital markets work better.

If you want to go far, it is better to go along with others and that is why we always have discussions on co-operation in the capital market”.