Government tasked on incentives for more firms to list on NSE

Federal Government has been urged to provide incentives for companies that control key sectors of the economy to list on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

Kunle Elebute, national senior partner, KPMG, who said this was concerned also that the upstream oil and gas as well as telecom firms ware not listed on the exchange.

“The NSE is not a full representation of our economic activity because we don’t have upstream oil and gas, telecom and other companies on the stock exchange. In effect, there needs to be some sort of incentives for those companies to come to stock exchange,” he said.

Speaking in an interview with some journalists in Lagos, he said, “Until we have companies that represent key Nigerian sectors, including agriculture, oil and gas, and telecom, on the exchange, the NSE is still small part of our larger economy.”

Elebute also urged the government to privatise or concession some of it businesses to private sector, saying “this is against the background that government cannot run the airport, refineries, petrochemical plants, pipelines or power plant.

“When the business is run properly, efficiently or profitably, it will make profit. So, government return on any business is tax.”

Elebute, who was one of the participants at the recently concluded World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, stressed the need for leadership that was responsible to the people, population of the country, region and also responsible to issues like climate change and ensure that global economy continued to prosper.

“Responsible leadership is about taking responsibility for your people, livelihood to ensure that poverty and hunger is reduced, ensure correct education for the people and create jobs,” he said.