-By Oriade Ayomide
The Federal Government has said the proposed sale of the Abuja Securities and Commodities Exchange will be completed by June this year.
Speaking on the imminent sale, Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, ArunmaOteh, noted that the government’s earlier commitment to complete the privatisation exercise by the end of last year could not hold, as it was unable to meet the deadline.She added that there are interested investors on the sidelines who are waiting for the completion of the privatization process before coming in.
“The government wants to privatise the only commodity exchange and it had committed to doing it by the end of last year. It didn’t meet that deadline, but it’s planning to do something by the middle of 2014. We have a number of both domestic and international players, who are very interested; they would rather acquire the privatised exchange, so they’re trying to see how far the government is going with this initiative and if not, they are prepared to seek a registration for a new commodity exchange.”
It would be recalled that the Abuja commodities exchange was converted from a stock exchange to a commodities market in 2001 and has information on crops traded dated January 2008.
