Onyema: Nigeria Remains Investors’ Best Choice in Africa

The Chief Executive of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Oscar Onyema has stated that despite the rigidity in the foreign exchange market, Nigeria remains top of investors’ choice on the African continent.

He made this know while speaking at the NSE/ London Stock Exchange (LSE) conference held in Lagos yesterday.

The NSE boss said the conference with the theme, “Leveraging Cross-Border Capital Markets for Sustainable Growth,“ is topical for Nigeria at this time as the government grapples with the task of articulating a clear economic blue print for the short to midterm within which credible fiscal and monetary policies can emerge, and diversifying the economy in the face of depressed earnings from legacy sources, the reality of the need to leverage and embrace the globalisation of economies and financial markets becomes clearer.
Capital Markets, he stated, are critical to sustainability of growth and development in an Economy.

“It is my strong belief that one of the things that Nigeria (and Africa) needs to sustain its growth, is a solid and vibrant capital market ecosystem that will attract investment and unlock the potential that exists in the economy. Capital markets increase the proportion of long-term savings that is channelled to long-term investments.

“Based on current outlook for Economies and Markets of the G7 countries, only the economies of the United States and United Kingdom appear on track to have sustainably exited the global financial crisis of 2008. Why are The United Kingdom (UK) and The United States (US) ahead? One of the key differentiating factors these two markets have in common, relative to the others, is a strong and resilient capital market/financial system, “he said.

Onyema added Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer and Director of International Development, LSE, Nikkil Rathi, said the LSE partnership with the NSE will ensure that Nigerian companies are exposed to global capital market.

The LSE, he stressed, is very passionate about the development of the African capital markets, a reason he said informed the formation of the African Advisory Board.
The board, he added, has amongst its plans, effort to help Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) get access to capital that will aid their growth and development.