SEC Advocates Capital Market Integration To Unlock West Africa’s Growth

The manager wide of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Dr. Emomotimi Agama, has urged West African countries to accelerate the integration of their superior markets arsenic to mobilise the standard of concern needed to thrust the region’s development.

Speaking astatine the Experts Meeting connected Validation of the WASRA Charter and Recognition of WASRA arsenic the Regulatory Body for Cross-Border Securities Market successful ECOWAS, held yesterday successful Abuja, Agama, who is besides the president of WASRA,  said the inaugural represents ‘a watershed moment’ successful the region’s fiscal history.

According to him, West Africa faces urgent developmental challenges ranging from infrastructure deficits and clime adaptation to integer translation and occupation creation.

He said, “To conscionable these challenges, we necessitate superior astatine scale, and the information is simple: nary azygous nationalist marketplace tin supply it alone. An integrated determination superior marketplace is nary longer a luxury; it is simply a necessity.”

The SEC brag lamented the dilatory gait of determination integration, informing that “each twelvemonth of hold is simply a mislaid accidental to mobilise resources for captious projects that tin alteration our economies.”

He pointed to Africa’s yearly infrastructure financing spread of implicit $100 billion, stressing that West Africa unsocial requires tens of billions of dollars to modernise transport corridors, upgrade vigor systems, and physique resilient integer infrastructure.

“Without integrated markets that excavation liquidity and broaden capitalist participation, our governments and backstage assemblage volition stay constrained, relying connected constricted fiscal abstraction and costly borrowing,” Agama said.

Drawing lessons from planetary models, helium noted that the European Union and ASEAN achieved important economical translation by harmonising rules, fostering capitalist confidence, and facilitating seamless cross-border funding.

“The instauration of a azygous marketplace enabled European firms to entree backing seamlessly crossed borders, boosting innovation and competitiveness. Closer to home, ASEAN coordinated standards and deepened fiscal cooperation, strengthening its resilience arsenic a determination bloc.”

He emphasised that West Africa has adjacent greater imaginable with a colonisation of much than 400 cardinal and a combined GDP of astir $800 billion.

Agama outlined however integration would bring benefits beyond infrastructure, noting that “in agriculture, integrated markets tin mobilise superior for value-chain development, agro-processing, and nutrient security, which are captious priorities for our region.”

He added: “in the integer economy, determination superior tin enactment innovation hubs, fintech scale-ups, and broadband expansion, ensuring that West Africa afloat participates successful the 4th concern revolution.”

He further stressed that cross-border pools of capital, backed by harmonised regulation, could present a transformative interaction crossed aggregate sectors, including younker empowerment and occupation creation.

Presenting the objectives of the West Africa Securities Regulators Association (WASRA), Agama said the assemblage was established with a wide mandate to anchor marketplace integration.

Also speaking astatine the meeting, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, noted that the gathering marked a important measurement successful the corporate travel toward a harmonised regulatory framework, 1 that reflects the shared aspirations of ECOWAS subordinate states to deepen superior marketplace integration, heighten cross-border investments, and beforehand fiscal stability.

Edun, represented by the main economist of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Hassan Jibrin, pointed retired that validation of the draught WASRA Charter is not simply a procedural formality but a captious instauration for organization coherence, regulatory cooperation, and sustainable marketplace improvement crossed our subregion.

Speaking connected behalf of the ECOWAS Commission, acting manager of the backstage sector, Peter Oluonye, noted that for superior markets integration to summation traction successful ECOWAS, concerted efforts of each stakeholders are needed to harmonise rules, practices, and regulations to standards acceptable to each jurisdictions.