Accountability failing in Ghanaian businesses – GSE

Abena Amoah, the Deputy Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), has bemoaned the low interest by local businesses to grow their firms by listing on the GSE.

She thus, singled out accountability as the main reason businesses are not listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

The Deputy Managing Director believes there are myriad of funding opportunities that local businesses can tap into by listing on the local bourse. However, businesses are failing to tap into such opportunities.

Ms. Abena Amoah noted that the foreign companies operating in Ghana are listed on their parent country’s local bourse, but that is not the case in Ghana, as only a handful of companies are listed on the exchange.

“Almost all the Nigerian Banks in Ghana are listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, South Africa banks are listed in their country. Here in Ghana, we have only about 40 firms listed on the exchange” she said.

Ms. Abena Amoah disclosed that the Ghana Stock Exchange has had a lot of engagements with the local companies, but realized they are not informed well on the current happenings and operations of the Ghana Stock Exchange.

“We have reached out to a lot of Ghanaian businesses; many of them had misconception as to how to list on the GSE.”

The Deputy Managing Director indicated that Ghana Stock Exchange has done everything within its power to improve on the systems and to attract the local companies.

She cited a number of memorandums of understanding the exchange has entered with some companies early in the year.

“We have actually made the process as simple as possible and we have entered into MoU with various associations like AGI, Stanford Seed Transformation Network and we are engaging with them”.

Ms. Amoah is, however, optimistic the current educational campaign on the need for local businesses to list on the bourse will yield some fruits. She revealed that many of the businesses refused to open up for fear of being held accountable.

“Many have been afraid of opening up to other shareholders, because the point of being accountable, they see it as a very difficult matter.”

The Deputy Managing Director, subsequently charged the local businesses to emulate the Nigerian businesses.

“The pride of every Nigerian business is to be quoted on their stock market and I think the education we are doing should see a lot more Ghanaians listed.”

Currently, about 40 firms are listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange since the inception of the bourse in July 1989. However, only a handful participates in trading activities.

It can be recalled that Nana Agyei i-Agyemang, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Blackstar Brokerage, in an interaction with the Vaultz news recently disclosed that, the reason for low patronage of some stocks on the Ghanaian stock market by some companies is the herding behavior of investors.

“Our markets mostly operate on herding behaviors. We see large trading activities in only a few stocks because investors believe previous trading activities and prices increases would also interest other investors to trade on those stocks.”