09 Jun 2020

Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) chief executive officer says they are the only stock exchange in Africa that remained stable during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Briefing the media Monday, Mr Thapelo Tsheole said they had an equity turnover of about P273 million from January to May.

He noted that the local bourse remained relatively stable with a 2.3 per cent knock on the domestic market index.

He added that the BSE remained tradable while other stock markets, such as the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s domestic index fell by 28 per cent while Mauritius’ domestic index fell by 32 per cent.

Proportionately, he said foreign companies contributed over P76 million to the total equity turnover while individuals contributed about P19 million and local companies P173 million while brokers contributed less than one per cent or P500 000.

“The amount contributed by local companies owes mainly to pension funds which marked the biggest trade in the BSE,” Mr Tsheole explained.

He said the turnover indicated the BSE’s ability to increase the investor base, which it had successfully done over the past few years.

Operationally, Mr Tsheole said BSE would continue to utilise its trading platforms to enable companies to sell more stocks and bonds in order to recover from the effects of COVID-19.

He said interested companies could enlist within the BSE equity platform, which allowed companies of all sizes to raise equity capital under their recently introduced Tshipidi SME board, adding that it was meant to facilitate listing on the SMEs.

Mr Tsheole also said they would be unveiling a central depository system to help improve trade in the stock exchange.

Other measures geared towards stimulating trade, he said, included an update of their webpages which would enable better trading analytics as well an application to be launched soon. Ends