Sudan, struggling to restore its economy after years of war and the break-away of newly formed South Sudan, aims to expand its tiny stock market to trade gold and commodities, Khartoum Stock Exchange General Manager Osman Hamad Khair told Reuters in an interview.
Sudan has been hit hard since its former civil war foe South Sudan took away two-thirds of the country's oil production, the lifeline for both economies, when it became independent in July under a 2005 peace agreement.
To compensate for the loss of oil revenues making up previously 90 percent of exports, Sudan wants to expand the production of gold and other minerals as well as agricultural goods.
It wants to encourage trade between local producers and foreign buyers on the Khartoum Stock Exchange by setting up a bourse for metals such as gold and the country's agricultural products such as gum arabic and maize.
The bourse is one of the last in Africa, maybe in the world, without a computer-based trading system. Trading of stocks and Islamic bonds is done by writing price offers and deals on white boards in a small room in central Khartoum.
Now, as a first expansion step, the bourse, which opened in 1995, will launch a long-delayed electronic trading system on January 8 after problems with the software were sorted out, Khair said. "We have fixed the date on the 8th of January. We are going electronic. We have trained all our staff and also the financial intermediaries," he said, sitting in his office next to the trading floor on the 11th floor of the Baraka business tower.
The launch of the trading system was delayed for months as the import of software proved difficult due to a US trade embargo deterring many Western firms from dealing with Sudan.
The computer-based trading will give foreigners better access and allow more cross-listings to other Arab bourse such as Qatar with which Khartoum is planning to sign a memorandum oof understanding, Khair said. "We will have connections with other markets in the Gulf area, all Gulf markets. We have already cross-listings with Abu Dhabi and Manama," he said.
The bourse's second step will be to set up a commodities trading platform to allow foreign firms better access to the market. "There is a high demand. We are doing this with metals, gold, gum arabic, all agricultural products," Khair said, adding that the bourse also wanted to create a trading platform for government real estate. He gave no timeframe or details.
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