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- Farid: building capital markets in sustainability is a "Necessity" to develop stock markets and achieve the sustainable development objectives.
- The roadmap was designed according to a survey of 71% of ASEA members
As a completion of the Egyptian Exchange (EGX)’ efforts to enhance sustainability practices in the African stock markets, Mohamed Farid EGX chairman participated in the 22 th annual conference of the African Stock Exchanges Association (ASEA) held in Lagos in Nigeria, during the period from 26 to 27 November 2018.
During the meetings, EGX chairman reviewed the first road map for the African capital markets’ sustainability, that EGX led its preparation process and chairs ASEA sustainability committee that also was formed as per EGX suggestion.
" Building the capital markets’ capacity with regard to sustainability in accordance with the best international practices has become essential to ensure the continuity of the results of development and reform processes in the stock exchanges and to achieve their objectives, and the contribution of capital markets to the achievement of the sustainable development objectives prepared and declared by the United Nations" according to EGX Chairman.
The working group to prepare the roadmap of the African stock markets’ sustainability, headed by EGX, depended on a poll of ASEA members that included 41 questions about sustainability practices, in which nearly 71% of ASEA members who are 28 participated.
The roadmap that includes the best global practices in sustainability, contains 4 main axes : the first is the definition of sustainability and how to apply it to the best practices applied while identifying those who are responsible for sustainability processes within the stock exchanges.
The second axis includes encouraging the stock exchanges to prepare annual sustainability reports and urging companies to issue semi-annual reports that include their efforts at the level of environment, governance and community responsibility.
The third axis includes assisting stock exchanges to prepare products and indicators including companies that are more committed to sustainability standards in order to launch a continental index for companies’ sustainability, and the fourth axis to raise the market awareness of sustainability standards and work on women’ empowerment.
Farid stated that the participation in ASEA conference came to emphasize EGX’ keenness to develop its relationship with the African capital markets to strengthen cooperation and exchanging experiences.
EGX chairman renewed his call during his participation in the activities of the Global Dialogue Conference of the United Nations’ Initiative on Sustainable Stock Exchanges in Geneva , October 2018, for the international development organizations to adopt the initiative he suggested to invest in the constituent
companies of sustainability indicators such as the sustainability index issued by Standard & Poor 's and EGX for the companies most committed for sustainability and governance standards in Egypt through the establishment of the Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) not only to motivate companies to disclose about sustainability-related disclosures, but also to invest in those areas, such as reducing energy consumption from renewable sources and others .
EGX was awarded the Leadership and Excellence Award in the field of sustainability, received by Mohamed Farid EGX chairman at the end of October 2018, during the Global Dialogue Conference of the United Nations Initiative on Sustainable Stock Exchanges in Geneva, which is held once every two years, in presence of representatives from the relevant securities industry parties internationally.
He also attended a discussion session on how capital markets contribute to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals in presence of NASDAQ vice president, chairman of the Nigerian sovereign fund and the assistant Nigerian president for sustainability.
The meeting discussed the importance of liberalizing sectors that affect sustainability, including new and renewable energy, EGX chairman said in his speech that the Egyptian experiment’ success in the field of new and renewable energy would not have been possible without the partial liberalization of energy prices in Egypt and the issuance of energy purchase tariff.
He also pointed to the importance of stock exchanges role in helping investment companies in the educational field to expand and start, where EGX has recently succeeded to list one of the companies investing in education.
