The Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Kofi Yamoah, has said he is certain that the alternative stock market for small- and medium-scale enterprises will be launched this year since all the modalities for the commencement are in place.

“We have the governing committee in place; it has been inaugurated and has had its first meeting. The Support Fund is in place. So all the infrastructure as far as the market is concerned is in place,” Mr. Yamoah told journalists at a meeting with members of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) on the processes involved.

“What we want to do is to launch it with the first company that will come on it. Basically, we are talking to a number of brokers as to the companies they are working on; and once that first company comes and raises money from the market and is listing, we will seize the opportunity to do the launching,” he said.

The GSE, he said, has already contributed an initial amount of US$50,000 to the establishment of the Support Fund and is expecting about US$600,000 from the Africa Development Bank, plus an initial amount of US$100,000 from the Venture Capital Fund.

The Fund, known as the SME Listing Revolving Fund Facility, will assist qualifying high-growth companies to pay for their listing expenses ahead of actual public floatation.

The alternative market has been hailed as a novelty in helping SMEs to raise long-term capital. It's difficulty may however lie in the age-old Ghanaian mindset of wanting to be the sole owner, however, small the entity is.

“All companies in Ghana started as family companies, and, therefore, we have to change our mindset and know that for a company to really survive in this competitive global village, we need to expand our vision. We need to expand our companies, and it is only by forming partnerships that we can do that,” President of the AGI, Nana Owusu Afari, told the B&FT in a recent interview.

The GSE understands that for the market to be successful it will have to undertake a lot of education to disabuse the minds of business owners from the idea they lose their businesses when they share.

“There is a large amount of financial illiteracy in the market, so people don’t understand what it means to list and what the financial implications are. All they know is that you need money, you go to the bank, work, pay; that’s it,” Mr. Yofi Grant, Executive Director at Databank, told the B&FT.

Ghana’s capital markets, he said, are pretty young, and people have still not caught on to the benefits of going to the equity market to raise money.