Henry Rotich names team to oversee CMA master plan execution
Treasury Cabinet secretary Henry Rotich has formed an eight-person committee that will be charged with coordinating efforts to make Nairobi an international financial centre. PHOTO | FILE |
What you need to know:
Committee includes the attorney-general, cabinet secretaries in charge of mining and agriculture, governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, chief executive of the Capital Markets Authority, director-general of Communications Authority of Kenya and the chairperson of the financial sector regulators forum.
The committee will serve for a five-year term beginning January.
Kenya is seeking to strengthen its bid to be Africa’s financial hub by forming a committee to spearhead the implementation of a capital markets master plan.
The eight-person committee formed by Finance secretary Henry Rotich will also be charged with coordinating efforts to make Nairobi an international financial centre.
The committee includes the attorney-general, cabinet secretaries in charge of mining and agriculture, governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, chief executive of the Capital Markets Authority, director-general of Communications Authority of Kenya and the chairperson of the financial sector regulators forum.
“Terms of reference for the committee include to take overall responsibility for oversight in the implementation of the Kenya capital markets master plan and facilitate its alignment with the establishment of Kenya as the heart of capital markets financing and investment in Africa and Nairobi as an international financial centre,” reads part of the notice from Mr Rotich.
Opening up
The inclusion of mining and agriculture ministries underlines the expected formation of commodities exchange as envisioned in the CMA master plan.
The plan also envisions that by 2023, 30 per cent of county financing should be done through the market. Currently, county governments are dependent on funds from the national Treasury and revenue collections.
The committee will serve for a five-year term beginning January. However some of the positions to be included do not exist as yet. The government is yet to form the financial sectors regulators forum, which is expected to consolidate the pension industry, Saccos, insurance and capital markets.
Other recommendations spelt out in the master plan include opening up of listed companies for full ownership by foreigners. The CMA has been pushing for the removal of the current cap of 75 per cent as the level of foreign ownership allowed under the law.
The proposal to remove the cap is included in the ten-year master plan launched in November. The point is to allow a company that is fully owned by foreigner to list and trade shares on the NSE.
The removal of the ownership cap would help the markets move towards achieving the status of an emerging market by 2020 as rated by the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Index.
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