Gov’t urged to establish stock exchange market

Abdoulie Baks Touray, president of American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), has said many big corporations around the world today started as a sole ownership and end up coming together to form big businesses with diverse ownerships through established and organised stock exchanges.

Mr Touray

He says if the government could first create the legal instrument for its existence, a stock exchange market would greatly help in turning small businesses into giant corporations that would drive the Gambian economy into the likes of Singapore and other emerging economies and industrialised  nations.  It would also create space for a fluid financial and capital market.

Explaining an instance by which small businesses can become big corporations through the stock exchange market, Mr Touray said: “For instance, you came in as an individual to start MarketPlace newspaper; later on you realised that you need to expand the business, so you go to the stock exchange market to float your shares for interested investors to take ownership then the business becomes an ‘invisible hand’, a corporation that is largely beyond the control of individual firms.” 

He also cited the case of Henry Fords, founder of Ford Motor Company, who started the company as an individual but later floated its shares in a stock exchange and people took ownership of it and the company became an ‘invisible hand’.