Trade on GSE doubles despite slow start – Ekow Afedzie

Mr. Ekow Afedzie, the Managing Director of Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), has disclosed that despite the Exchange rate starting the year 2022 slowly, it witnessed a rise in trading activities on the market at the end of February.

Mr. Afedzie made this known while explaining the February report released by his outfit.

According to him, the number of transactions on the GSE doubled from 893 in February, 2021 to 1,710 by the close of February this year.

He however, expressed his excitement that the local bourse is finally picking up from where it left off last year.

Mr. Ekow Afedzie, thus, attributed the increase in transactions on the Accra bourse to the easing of restrictions on coronavirus infections, as he said “the GSE mimics the economy. When the economy performed well, the GSE also did better.”

The February stock market summary report, however, revealed the Ghanaian stock market returned a loss in February amid the difficult economic situation driven by rising inflation and high cost of fuel.

“The market started on a slow note for the first two months of the year with a return of -3.33 per cent,” the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) said in the February market summary report. On the equities market, the volume and value traded were 31,108,719 and GH¢26, 429,969.61 respectively. Comparatively, it recorded 30.1 million and 24.97 million on volume and values traded the same period last year” he said.

GSE February Report

The top gainers in the year-to-date were SIC which shares appreciated by 87.50 per cent, EGL at 18.28 per cent, and GGBL at 17.78 per cent

The GSE Composite Index fell by 2.54 per cent from 2,766.80 to 2,696.45 between January and February.

Market Capitalization Declines

Total market capitalization fell by 2.50 per cent from GH¢64.5 million in January to GH¢62.9 million in February.

On the Ghana Fixed Income, Mr Afedzie noted that the bond market closed the month recording gains over the previous month.

“The month closed with a total volume trade at 19.33 billion representing an increase of 15.89 per cent compared to total volume trades in the previous month and an increase of 27.41 per cent compared to the same period last year” he indicated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Afedzie noted that the cumulative volume traded from January to February 2022 was 36.01 billion, representing 8.07 per cent, which is more than the 33.32 billion traded in the same period last year.

Thursday’s Market Activity

At the end of last week’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 2,401,346 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 3,018,423.68, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Wednesday, March 16), Thursday’s data showed 813% improvement in volume and 107% improvement in turnover.

In the aggregate, 12 GSE listed equities participated in trading, ending with one loser, namely GCB Bank, with 0.19% share price depreciation. MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 2.34 million traded shares, followed by Enterprise Group (35,080), Standard Chartered Bank (20,158) and CAL Bank (5,305).