Moment of truth for local Stock Market

Oct 03, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – When representatives of Guyana and Jamaica met earlier this year in the CARICOM headquarters location for a concord on the country’s emerging stock market, President Dr. Irfaan Ali summarised his ambitious vision for the sector.

Come next October 8-9, an outline of the country’s stock market modernisation plan is expected to be unveiled during the second ‘Regional Investments and Capital Markets Conference’ at Pegasus Suites and Corporate Centre, Kingston, Georgetown.

The Conference will be held under the theme, ‘Financing For Success: Where Passion, Prosperity, and People Align’, organisers said in a press release.  The modernisation plan of the local stock market is predicated on the “great success” model of its counterpart, the 55-year-old Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE), President Ali told the visiting Jamaican delegation when he met them at his Vlissengen Road office in the capital city.

Kingston’s JSE “is the best in the Region, and Guyana doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel,” the Guyanese President reiterated to the team headed by its Managing Director, Dr. Marlene Street Forrest. For her part, Dr. Street Forrest’s decade-long dream was finally firmly within her reach.

“We have been knocking on Guyana’s (stock market) doors for years,” she recalled.

There will be much to profit Guyana when the 54-year-old Cooperative Republic implements the package the 55-year-old award-winning JSE offers, assured Mr. Michael Johnson, its Deputy Business Development Manager, when he addressed a recent online forum.

Johnson said the JSE blueprint will help:

• promote the orderly and transparent development of the stock market
• ensure that the stock market and its brokers operate at the highest standard
• develop, apply, and enforce rules designed to ensure public confidence in the stock market and its broker-members
• provide facilities for the transaction of stock market business (Nasdaq Trading Platform)

With the JSE’s vast experience in the field, Georgetown can lean on Kingston to help it develop similar products for its current and future clientele which includes:

• Central Securities Depository
• eCampus
• Online Trading Platform
• Financial Focus Cable Station (CBX)
• Social stock exchange
• Corporate Services

 

Deputy Business Development Manager Johnson told participants, during the recent online forum, that his country’s stock market also provides cash and non-cash benefits for listing as a partner.

Non-cash benefits include:

• Raising the company and business profile
• easier valuation when needed
• enhancing corporate discipline and transparency
• global marketing for the brand
• a motivated staff
• enhancing its corporate social responsibility (CSR) partnership, and
• goodwill

Meanwhile, the financial benefits of listing on the JSE include:

• The ability to raise capital from the public
• increasing cash flow from patient capital
• encouraging public participation in the successes of the company
• access to more patient capital by listing other securities
• a stronger negotiation position for debit
• attractive alternatives to debt financing
• the ability to sell large volumes of shares via the secondary market without much hassle.

 

In going forward, President Ali signalled that his administration would be “eyeing” the format of the highly successful Junior Market brought into being in Kingston in 2009. When the two sides met earlier this year, it was unanimously agreed that Georgetown is the most favourable place in the region to launch the Commodities Exchange which the Guyanese president emphasised would be “a real plus for Guyana and the Caribbean.”

Commodity exchanges are organised, regulated markets which facilitate the purchase and sale of interchangeable contracts with features such as standardised quantities and qualities, and minimum prices with agreed delivery schedules. Their contract values are linked to the price of commodities such as oil or corn. Traders, producers, speculators, and industrial end-users such as food manufacturers, factories, clothing manufacturers, and construction companies are the principal participants in the commodities market where business is done through Pit or Electronic trading.
President Ali is convinced that Guyana “can build on top” of a Commodities Exchange if established in the country.

“We will work out the full plan of how to go forward and accelerate the development of the local stock exchange,” President Ali had assured the JSE team.

 

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• Dr. Marlene Street Forrest, Managing Director, Modernisation, Organisers, Regional Investments

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