EGX becomes funding member of AELP initiative

CAIRO – 12 February 2019: The Egyptian Exchange (EGX) announced that it has become a founding member of the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP) initiative.

AELP is an electronic project linking between African exchanges to promote intra-continent investments.

EGX elaborated on its website that this step came to strengthen investments between African Stock Exchanges.

Besides the Egyptian Exchange, AELP initiative includes African Exchange of Nigeria, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Casablanca, Mauritius and BRVM which are the umbrella exchange for Togo, Senegal, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger.

Chairman of EGX Mohamed Farid participated last week in the first two sessions of the 51st meeting of the African Stock Exchanges Federation and the second meeting of the members of the project of linking the African stock exchanges.

Farid said that the initiative aims to increase and enhance inter-securities investments among the African stock exchanges by working on building an electronic platform for all related parties, especially brokerage firms, to simplify trading between different markets within the initiative.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) supports the initiative, which is working on plans to develop African capital markets to play its part in financing the expansion of companies in various economic activities, thus creating jobs that contribute to improving living conditions and further building these markets' capacity as trading and investment markets that allow investors to transfer ownership in a transparent and flexible manner.

He added that the Egyptian Stock Exchange's accession as a founding member of the African Stock Exchange Initiative comes at a time of great importance, as Egypt seeks to regain its leading role in Africa through its chairmanship of the African Union at its current session. Furthermore, Egypt aims at exchanging experiences and opening up to Africa and the world to improve the capabilities of these exchanges.

"We need to strengthen communication with all institutions to provide a suitable environment for presenting the latest developments in the economic scene, exchanging views and visions to be the linkage between capital flows and investment opportunities in Egypt," Farid added.

EGX ended Monday’s session on mixed performance, and market capitalization lost LE 586.28 million, amid foreign selling.