Times reports on its business page that although ?79,312.03 was raised through rights issue and initial public offers, portfolio investors lost over 50 per cent of their dollar investments. The free fall of the cedi also affected the Exchange’s performance.
Most of the stocks were not spared with the market generally quiet. The initial capitalisation of the GSE before Ashanti goldfields Company was listed in May in 1994 was ?238 billion (209 million dollars).
Its listing capitalisation of 1.5 billion dollars shot the market’s capitalisation to a little over ?2 trillion-equivalent to 1.8 billion dollars.
Today, with a market capitalisation of ?3.6 trillion and under a depreciating environment, it has reduced the market in dollar terms to just 530 million dollars.
This development is not conducive to the development of investments because the Exchange’s capitalisation is far less than the minimum ?5 billion dollars that an emerging market needs to attract a substantial investment.
