The world Bank has stepped up plans to develop capital markets in East Africa b y designing programmes aimed at improving efficiency in securities market, expanding the debt market and increasing liquidity.
The new initiative dubbed by the international Finance Corporation as Efficient securities Markets Institutional Development Initiative (ES-MID) is expected to boost global capital inflows, which are currently heading into emerging markets that have proved to be more profitable in recent times, because of high returns offshore investors are earning.

Emerging markets have been averaging about 5% real GDP per year were growth in developed economies has been dropping over the past 30 years and has attracted offshore investors’ world wide.
Key investor concerns in emerging markets are: accounting standards, stock exchange market regulation, market liquidity price transparency and ease of settlements.
Experts say the programmes will boost domestic savings and increase the quality of investment across the region, which will in turn lead to availability of cheap finance in local market and job creation.

The programme manager ESMID Private Enterprise Partnership For Africa(PEP Africa),Mr. Evans Osano said during the pilot training of trainers course held in Kampala on march 17 to 18 that all the programmes designed by World bank aim equipping both regulators and players in the capital market with skills that attract inflows of global capital in the region.
“The world bank has designed various programmes to improve capital market in East Africa. The programme deals with training of trainers to impart skills to players in the industry to conduct market activities in transparently and professionally” he said.

Mr. Osano said that global capital tends to flow into regions, which conform to international standard of regulation and trading in the global capital market. The regional insititute-securieties industry Training institute(SITI)located at the Uganda securities Exchange ,will provide training to all parties involved in the capital market in the East African region.
Stock markets are seen as enhancing the operations of domestic financial systems in general and capital markets in particular.
Experts from different sections of the programme are anticipating that East Africa stands to benefit the global capital markets, but advice that the region needs to have large volumes of instruments, which global investors can invest in. Because if there is no such, they will go were these are in place.
Equity Market is more developed than the debt market and the question now is how to increase efficiency in the debt market.
The world bank believes that this will help meet a growing demand for infra-structure projects, which often face a shortage of long term local currency financing. The voice-president and general manager of DevPar Financial Consulting Ltd,a Canadian firm conducting the training,Mr James M.Chester said Ugandans should stop talking of a national stock Excahnge,and talk about global capital and see if itself as part of the global capital market “he said.
He said that Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi join with Kenya. East African capital markets will be the third largest in sub Saharan Africa with market share of 120 million people after Nigeria and South Africa.
To succeed, regional approaches require harmonized laws and accounting standards, automation, currency convertibility and a liberalized trade regime.

All emerging markets accounted for 9%of the world’s equity markets.
Of this 9 %( including North Africa and South Africa) accounted for 11.6%of the equities. As a percentage of the equities in the world, all of Africa combined accounted for 1%.

All Africa including South Africa total market capitalization vs. global last year was 1.4%.South Africa is 80%of all equities on the continent. Kenya is the fifth largest capital market after South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria.