Celestin Rwabukumba, RSE boss
The Rwanda Stock Exchange (RSE) market has set its eyes on pushing for more investments, company listing alongside having the bourse trading activities automated with the regional platform.
RSE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pierre Celestin Rwabukumba, who is currently Chairman of the East African Securities Exchanges Association (EASEA) said that the year 2020 had major highlights despite the coronavirus pandemic which has paralysed global business investment decisions.
For example, a stock snapshot for 2020 showed that Rwanda managed to hit the 10 companies listing benchmark which is required by the World Bank Doing Business report assessment.
In the 2019 Doing Business report, Rwanda moved almost ten steps down (from 29 to 38 globally) as a result of not fulfilling this condition.
Some of the freshly listed companies that enabled Rwanda to hit this mark include: Cimerwa PLC, RH Bophelo (cross listing), I&M bank rights issuing and 15 debt instruments which all together managed to gather Rwf313billion from January 1-December 31, 2020 compared to Rwf199.28billion in the same period in 2019 representing a 57.08% change rate.
“This year we will push for more listing of local companies, investments and automation of the stock market. We have already done the testing (automation),” Rwabukumba said.
The RSE bourse which clinched 22,000 active investors also witnessed the local investors dominate shares of the market at 83.6% while the regional investors had 13.8% and international ones, 2.6%.
