Setting up stock exchange

Coordinating national stocks

Description

Setting up a stock exchange involves establishing a regulated marketplace for the buying and selling of securities, enabling companies to raise capital and investors to trade shares transparently. This strategy addresses issues of capital scarcity, lack of investment opportunities, and inefficient resource allocation by providing standardized trading mechanisms, regulatory oversight, and market information. The process includes creating legal frameworks, technological infrastructure, and supervisory bodies to ensure fair, orderly, and efficient market operations.

Context

A well-regulated stock exchange stimulates development of the private sector. It opens the country's industries and services to investment from local people and foreigners, and makes the process of buying and selling shares transparent and policeable. The setting up of a stock exchange is fundamental to economic development.

Implementation

A lawyer and an economist from the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation (CFTC) prepared an outline plan for a stock exchange in Ghana. They then made drafts of listing and membership rules for the exchange, in consultation with the Government, the central bank and business. In 1993, on the urging of the CFTC, the Government improved the regulatory framework of the Stock Exchange. In 1993, the Government called for CFTC help in opening up Ghana's market in listed securities to non-residents, and setting up a regulatory regime for mergers and acquisitions. CFTC funding allowed operational staff from the Delhi and Bombay Stock Exchanges to work with the in-house Commonwealth specialists.