eBusiness Weekly
Tawanda Musarurwa
HARARE – President Emmerson Mnangagwa today launched C-Trade, in one of the biggest developments around Zimbabwe’s capital markets in recent years.
C-Trade is an online and mobile trading platform for the trading of shares on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and the alternative trading platform, the Financial Securities Exchange (Pvt) Limited (FINSEC).
This mobile trading platform is the first of its kind in the Sub Saharan African region. And the initiative is being led by capital markets regulator, Securities Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (SECZ).
Officiating at the launch, President Mnangagwa said the C-Trade initiative will both widen and deepen the country’s capital markets.
“This is indeed another milestone achievement in the financial services sector as this platform will allow a broader spectrum of our society to directly trade and invest on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.
“The adoption of mobile and online trading will result in a larger volume of traffic to the stock market due to the added convenience in transacting. The mobile trading, because of its wide reach will encourage participation at grassroots level as well as among the small retail investor, thus widening and deepening the scope of capital markets,” said President Mnangagwa.
“This development is further set to deepen financial inclusion in the capital markets through the use of the C-Trade platform and its attendant online and mobile application which can be utilised by mobile network subscribers.
“The C-Trade platform resonates well with our mantra that ‘Zimbabwe is open for business,’ as it aims at harnessing, promoting and opening up financial markets for broader participation with increased convenience and ease.”
The technical partner for the mobile share trading platform is Escrow Systems, a unit of the Escrow Group that provided the technical solution for the mobile traded retail bond in Kenya last year.
The system will allow for mobile trading of both bonds and shares.
The ZSE and the Financial Securities Exchange (Private) Limited (FINSEC) already have systems in place that list and trade bonds. Debt listing rules have since been gazetted and paved way for the listing of bonds.
So far, the ZSE has listed one bond (Getbucks) and FINSEC has also three Debt listings, namely the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe (IDBZ) tranches 1 and 2, and the UNTU U-Gain Bond.
