Africa urged to speed up market integration

"Over time, national stock exchanges can be expected to unify simply because efficiency demands it, technology demands it and costs require it," Zimbabwe's central bank governor Leonard Tsumba told a symposium.

"But there are practical efforts to full integration. It requires coordination of fiscal and monetary policies and current experience suggests that full macroeconomic convergence is still a long way off," he added.

Tsumba told a meeting of the Association of African Central Banks (AACB) that wide differences in African inflation rates, unsustainable public deficits and volatile exchange rates in some countries were among the obstacles to integration.

He made no mention of Zimbabwe's economy, which is mired in crisis exacerbated by politically-motivated violence ahead of presidential elections next year and an illegal grab of mainly white-owned commercial farmland.

The symposium aims to come up with strategies to attract more investment and speed up regional economic and financial integration in response to a South African-led recovery programme, the New Africa Initiative, launched last month.

The head of South Africa's JSE Securities Exchange, Russell Loubser, repeated an offer made several years ago to other countries within the 14-member Southern African Development Community to link up with its electronic trading platform.

Only Namibia has responded so far, joining the trading system JET in 1998.

"South Africa has a role to play in the development in the region and its financial markets," he said.

"That offer that we put on the table still stands. We want our SADC neighbours to consider it ... technology is not the problem, it is international politics, it is ego," he said.

Charles Banny, the head of West Africa's central bank BCEAO, urged delegates to consider the offer, saying that different regions should integrate at their own pace.

"Location is not important ... the important thing is to have access. Political will is an important element," he said.

Banny pointed out that the market capitalisation of Africa's 18 bourses amounted to less than one percent of the global total, and South Africa's JSE accounted for 80 percent of that amount.