NASD OTC securities to increase Capital market contribution

The NASD OTC Securities Exchange Plc has started a strategic move to increase the contribution of the capital market to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP. The securities also plans to launch a portal that will increase the visibility and investment in Nigerian enterprises.
The portal, NASD Enterprise Portal, NASDeP, will be launched in the first quarter of 2018, and provides a central database of private investment opportunities and investors pools.
Speaking at a parley to introduce the portal to the market operators in Lagos, Managing Director/CEO, NASD OTC Plc, Mr. Bola Ajomale, said the platform would be used by the Small and Medium Enterprises, SME, space in collating and standardising information on growth enterprises, build a record of private capital flows into Nigerian enterprises and ease the prolonged due diligence process for investors.
He explained that it would encourage growth enterprises to prepare for next stage financing, as well as improve financial reporting and corporate governance in growth enterprises, adding that information uploaded to the portal would be accessible for research purposes and for potential investors and people looking to partner with Nigerian companies to see and take decision.
He noted that the Exchange is targeting to take-off with about five thousand companies.
Explaining further, he said “There are a lot of private equity that is going on in this country; a lot of entities are raising long term funding and any long term funding is capital market activity. They are raising long term capital either by way of multilateral agencies, self sourced, or by private equity and angel investment and these activities are not being documented. So, we are launching a portal by the Q1, 2018 that will be able to capture all these information.
“It is an information depository that will deepen the amount of information that is available on the capital market and allows us to focus our energy in building the size of the capital market.”
“We are introducing a new approach to satisfy a side of the market that in the past has been ignored. In the past, the capital market does not look at the public market space and when you are looking the market capitalisation to the GDP, you hear that our market capitalisation to GDP is seven percent.
“In South Africa, the size of their market capitalisation to the GDP is 232 percent. The reason is because they take account of other aspects of the capital market that we in Nigeria do not look at. The seven percent they are taking about is just numbers from the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE. By the time we take in numbers from the NASD, FMDQ and the other markets, we see that the number is bigger than seven percent,” he added.