It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the website of the Douala Stock Exchange (DSX). I invite you to take a look around our site in order to discover the history, the organisation, and the operations of the Cameroonian market as wells as the products and services offered both to issuers of stocks and to investors, both public and private, at this moment when Cameroon, the economic powerhouse of the CEMAC region (both in terms of its population and its Gross national Product), has just reached the ‘achievement point’ of the HIPC (highly indebted poor countries) initiative.
Based in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, port city and main point of entry to the CEMAC region, the Douala Stock Exchange is both the standard bearer of the national economic and financial community, and the result of the determination of the Cameroonian Government. The Douala Stock Exchange is a public limited company with a Board of Directors and capital of 1.8 billion francs cfa, of which 63.7% of the shares are held by private commercial banks, Credit Foncier of Cameroon and the Dutch bank FMO, 23% by public interests, and 13.3% by private insurance companies.
Operating in an economic environment which has been reformed by an ongoing restructuring of the financial system on the one hand, and a promising business climate resulting from the liberalisation of the market sector on the other, the aim of the Douala Stock Exchange is:
- To enhance and diversify the availability of finance
- To facilitate privatisation programmes and the granting of credit
- To widen the range of investment possibilities available to the public and to institutional investors
- To ensure the transparency of economic and financial information.
The ambitions of the Douala Stock Exchange are in line with the general economic development of the country: steady growth of 4% in real terms of GNP for the past 5 years, consumer price inflation of around 2%, a reduction in the current account deficit and a reduction in external debt.
Furthermore, potential issuers of shares have identified the need for new investment in different sectors such as energy, agribusiness, housing and construction, transport, infrastructure, which traditional means of investment have not been able to satisfy.
All these elements create a climate which is conducive to the development of a capital market and the increase in value of fixed assets.
The Douala Stock Exchange operates according to internationally recognised standards and aims to be a channel for growth, participating in the national financial market while remaining open to the world.
I therefore invite you to make use of this new means of financing the Cameroonian economy, which will allow individuals, companies, the State and local communities to gain access to long-term and other finance, and allow investors, both individual and institutional, to gain a better return on their capital.
