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Sadc to create single regional stock exchange

Business
Sadc is working on modalities to create a single regional stock exchange as part of efforts to attain regional integration, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa has said.

Sadc is working on modalities to create a single regional stock exchange as part of efforts to attain regional integration, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa has said.

BY NQOBILE BHEBHE

Regional integration of Sadc economies, including the ambitious plan to launch a single currency for the region by 2018, has been central in Sadc meetings in recent years.

Addressing Sadc Finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Bulawayo yesterday, Chinamasa said the regional industrialisation strategy and roadmap was facing resource challenges hence harmonisation of financial and monetary reforms was necessary.

“It is critical to bear in mind that this committee of ministers of finance and central bank governors remains central to the overall success of the Sadc programmes as we forge ahead with the regional integration agenda” he said.

“This development agenda is reflected through the adoption by the Heads of States and Government during the Extra Ordinary Summit in Harare in April 2015, of the Sadc Regional Indicative Strategy Development Plan and the industrialisation strategy and road map.”

Chinamasa said, although the industrialisation strategy and roadmap resonated with the current Sadc theme, there were constraints to such an agenda.

“There are obviously binding constraints to such development agenda which include, among others, inadequate and poor quality infrastructure, a severe deficit of the skills needed in the region and insufficient resources,” he added.

Overcoming some of the challenges requires resource mobilisation from both domestic and external forces, he indicated.

“Sustaining high levels of resources necessary for industrialisation requires that we attend to the following, among others, deepening capital markets through developing financing vehicles, linking closely our Sadc stock exchanges with the objective of creating a regional stock exchange and encouraging private equity firms and public partnership arrangements in order to leverage our own domestic resources.”

Addressing the same meeting, Sadc executive secretary Stergomena Lawrence Tax said Zimbabwe had finally ratified the Protocol on Finance and Investment bringing the number of member States to 11. She said the country ratified the protocol on June 24 2015.