Regional governments should take advantage of automation across the East African Community (EAC) stock markets to speed up the combination of the region’s stock exchanges.
This arised during the East Africa capital markets stakeholders’ consultative meeting in Kigali l. The meast weeketing also discussed the Terms of Reference (TOR), and reviewed progress on the implementation of the EAC capital markets infrastructure integration project that were presented by the EAC’s Financial Sector Development and Regionalisation Project (EAC-FSDRP), and the system’s Pakistani vendors, Intotec Limited.
Rwanda Stock Exchange CEO said that partner states had agreed that the model of integration of the regional stock exchanges would be by linking national trading platforms and not having one single platform.
“We, therefore, reiterated that there was no need to undertake the studies,” he said.
The meeting also reviewed the work of the Capital Markets Infrastructure Technical Working Group (TWG). The TWG comprised of representatives from EAC stock exchanges, securities regulators, central banks and central securities depositories.
It was tasked with reviewing work done on the regional central securities depositories and trading platforms to identify gaps that needed to be addressed, make recommendations and ensure implementation of the projects was in line with regionalisation of the capital markets infrastructure.
Rwabukumba noted that the project would allow seamless movement of securities and payments between the different EAC capital markets, compatible at the regional level, thus creating a regional financial market in the EAC.
The EAC capital markets infrastructure is designed to link the automated trading systems and central securities depositories across the EAC securities markets through a Smart Order Router and CDS interface.