The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) will take over the Nigerian Commodity Exchange (NCX) in April this year. This follows the approval by the National Committee on Privatization (NCP) headed by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. The NSIA will provide strategic funding for the commodity exchange, for a period not exceeding five years.
The investment by the NSIA is to prepare the exchange for partial privatization, which was approved by the NCP in 2013.
This was disclosed by the Minister Of Trade and Industry Okechukwu Enelamah at the inauguration of the NCP Steering Committee on the revival of the NCX in Abuja.
The NCX formerly known as the Abuja Commodity and Stock Exchange (ASCE) was incorporated in 1998 as a public Limited Liability Company and commissioned in 1999. It was however converted to a commodity exchange in 2011, with the realization by authorities that the securities market in Nigeria was too small to sustain two exchanges. Since then, the exchange has been largely inactive.
The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) came into law in 2011, after then president Goodluck Jonathan assented to the act establishing it.It commenced operations in 2012, with a start up capital of $1 billion dollars. The fund is the third largest in sub saharan Africa after Botswana and Angola. It is expected to replace the Excess Crude Account (ECA) which was established in 2004, by the Obasanjo administration. It however ran into controversy, because it lacked constitutional backing, and had the federal government saving allocations accruing to both the state and local governments.
No comments:
Post a Comment