Ghana Alternative Market steps up education on listing for entrepreneurs

The Ghana Alternative Market (GAX) has stepped up its education campaigns to encourage Small and Medium enterprises to list on the Exchange to reap the benefits of long-term capital for growth.

Mr David Tetteh, a Consultant to the Ghana Stock Exchange, said the GAX has an ongoing information session for entrepreneurs to help them to take decisions about listing on the Market.

He said the move is also to inspire SMEs, which are not aware of the benefits of listing on the Exchange and the requirements.

“We have five listed, we probably have another five that are going through the process and then we have others that have also written to declare their intention to list. So, by the end of next year we should have at least 50 of them in the pipeline to list,” Mr Tetteh said.

He was speaking at an information session for about 35 companies on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

“We are expecting that in every group meeting, we find two or three companies that will be willing to go through the process,” he said, adding that, there would be an outreach to Kumasi and Takoradi and Tamale as well as other regional capitals.

“Therefore, we expect that by the end of the year, we will have found a lot of them and next year we will be pushing a lot of them.”

“We have five listed, we probably have another five that are going through the process and then we have others that have also written to declare their intention to list. So, by the end of next year we should have at least 50 of them in the pipeline to list,” Mr Tetteh said.

Touching on the challenges, Mr Tetteh said the major one was the lack of awareness and the feeling of most entrepreneurs that the process is above them so we are trying to mitigate that by giving them this information session.

“The second one is the fear of losing control, they feel that if they list here somebody can take their companies away from them, we are telling that the minimum float is 25 per cent and nobody can take your company from you unless you want to.”

He said while listing provided easy access to long-term capital, full disclosure to the Exchange also help the entrepreneurs to be disciplined in running their businesses.

“So, for individual engagement, we try to look at the company itself, look at its own peculiar challenges and then draw a picture about the benefits that the Stock exchange can provide to them in order for them to go global.

So we take it on a case by case basis. No company has the same reasons why they are not listing but it is a process. It may not be something that they will agree to in a month or two but we have a long term strategy of getting all of them to get on to the market,” he added.