August 06, 2012 / By Ayodele Aminu / The Nation

The high costs of listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and the inability to access cheap funds from abroad are some of the reasons telecoms firms, especially those with international affiliation, can’t list on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), The Nation has learnt.

Minster of Communication  Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, disclosed this at the Nigeria Business and Investment Summit, entitled: New world Nigeria: The world’s most vibrant market, organised by the Bank of Industry (BoI) at the Dorchester Hotel, London, United Kingdom.

Noting that listing of telecoms operators cannot be legislated, the minister said companies, such as MTN would prefer to source their funds from aboard rather than list on the NSE where costs are high.

“NSE needs to make it easier and cheaper for companies to list on the Exchange. It is only when costs of listing are competitive that the telecos can be attracted to list,” she said.
The minster, however, said  her ministry was in talks with the NSE to reduce its costs of listing.

Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, who spoke at a forum where ministers unveiled their scorecard as part of this year’s Democracy Day celebration and first anniversary of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, had stated that the era where multinational companies would come to Nigeria and generate huge profitS without the citizenry benefiting would become a thing of the past with the planned listing.

“We are also trying to encourage new companies to list on the NSE; we want to make sure that MTN, Glo, Zain (Airtel) and all the companies that are doing very well and making billions of profit should also list on the capital market so that Nigerians can share from their profits,” he had said.

But despite recent reduction in the initial listing and annual listing fees by the NSE, it still remains the costliest stock exchange in the emerging markets.

Apart from charging the highest fees at the point of listing from prospective companies wishing to access the market, both the annual listing fees and costs to investors on transactions done on the floor of the Exchange are relatively high.

Major Exchanges in Africa, namely, Cairo Stock Exchange (CSE), Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), and Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), have all introduced compelling incentives to entice upstart firms that might want to access the market following the crippling global financial meltdown.