Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe - Mozambique’s stock exchange may add five new listings by 2018, the first as early as June, as companies exploring for gas raise funding for projects, said Anabela Chambuca Pinho, chief executive officer of the bourse.
“Foreign companies operating or those wishing to extract gas and oil in our country that are listed on other exchanges have to be listed on our exchange in Mozambique,” she said in an interview in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe yesterday.
“These companies will need to raise capital in our markets.”
The southern African nation, site of the world’s largest discovery of natural gas in the past decade, has attracted companies including Anadarko Petroleum and Eni as it pushes for investments of as much as $30 billion into the industry by 2018.
The economy of more than 23 million people expanded 6.8 percent in the third quarter.
Vale SA, the world’s biggest iron-ore producer, is building a railway line to transport coal from a mine in Mozambique to the coast.
The Maputo, Mozambique-based bourse, known as the Bolsa de Valores de Mocambique, has a market capitalisation of more than 30 billion meticais ($977 million) with three listed companies as well as government and corporate debt, according to its website.
Stocks include SABMiller Plc’s Cervejas de Mocambique SA, a brewer, and Cia Mocambicana de Hidrocarbonetos SA, a state-owned oil and gas company.
“By end of June, we expect one more company to be listed,” Chambuca Pinho said, declining to identify the business because of confidentiality agreements.
“We are small in terms of numbers currently listed but we are growing.”
A company has to pay 28 million meticais to list its stock.
The bourse recorded 250 trades in 2012, 191 of which were in the equity market and 21 on the bond market, Chambuca Pinho said. It trades from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, according to its website.
The metical weakened 0.5 percent to 30.7000 per dollar as of 9:24 a.m. in the capital, Maputo.
The currency has dropped 3.3 percent against the dollar this year. - Bloomberg