WAMU-Securities: Lomé Hosts 2nd Edition of Sovereign Securities Day
Thursday, 27 June 2024 16:01 
(Togo First) - Over the past decade, the financing market for WAEMU countries has been extremely dynamic. But challenges remain.
The WAMU-Securities Agency held the second edition of its Sovereign Securities Day (JTS) in Lomé, on June 27. The annual event gathered several financial players of the WAEMU. This year, participants focused on the market’s development.
"For several years now, WAEMU States have been facing growing financing needs, linked not only to ambitious development programs but also to the management of health and security crises impacting our countries. Against this backdrop, the public securities market (MTP), and by extension the regional financial market, has shown increased resilience,” said Oulimata Ndiaye Diasse, director of the WAMU-securities agency.
"Our market dedicated to financing Uemoa zone states and our economies has evolved very strongly over the last ten years. The amounts mobilized have risen sharply from year to year, from nearly 2,000 billion a year in 2013, to 7,194 billion in 2023 after an exceptional peak of nearly 10,000 billion in 2020 at the time of Covid-19," she added.
Development Imperative
While the primary market has undergone profound changes, not only in terms of amounts, but also in terms of practices, especially "the strengthening of instrument liquidity and market depth, the assimilation of securities, the standardization of instruments issued, the implementation of a yield curve, or the strengthening of transparency and availability of information", challenges remain in the secondary market, Diasse stressed.
"Among the pillars of the development of a local bond market, is not only the expansion of the primary market, which we are delighted with in view of the results, but also and above all the development of the secondary market".
Indeed, this segment, despite strong ten-year growth and apparent dynamism (the annual volume traded rose from 100 billion in 2014 to almost 2,073 billion in 2023, with the number of participants rising from 18 to 93), faces several difficulties. These include the search for securities, the definition of fair prices for instruments, the finalization of transactions, and the turnover rate of the portfolio of public securities issued by auction.
New infrastructures
Faced with these resource mobilization challenges, work is underway to launch a quotation platform designed to enhance market transparency.
Octave A. Bruce
