Making Millions of Dollars From the Emerging Angolan Capital Market

Angola, a country located on the west coast of Africa has been experiencing an economic boom since the end of the country’s civil war in 2002, leading to its tagging by experts around the globe as Africa's new petroleum titan.

It is surrounded on the North by Congo, Northeast by Dem. Rep. of Congo (formerly Zaire), on the Southeast by Zambia, on the South by Namibia and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean.
The country's landscape consists mainly of broad tablelands varying from 3,000 to 5,000ft in altitude; a high plateau in the south ranges from 4,000 to 7,000 ft. The highest point in Angola is Mount Moco (8,569ft) in the Bengula region and Mount Navil (8,133ft) in the Cuanza Sul.

Angola's emergence as Africa’s largest oil producing country is undeniable. For a short time, it topped longtime leader, Nigeria amid a production boom for the Southern African nation with oil output intentionally scaled down to 1.656 million bpd to meet with OPEC’s requirement. This is attributable to the development of new projects in 2008 and the relative peace enjoyed by the country following permanent end to decades of civil war.

Although the oil sector is the major driver of the country's economic growth and development, other sectors such as mining, construction, ports, banking and telecoms are also developing speedily. Actually, large-scale investments in Angola are mainly focusing on infrastructure, including the telecommunication sector. Angola is still in the process of reconstruction and resettling large numbers of refugees after the long and brutal civil war. The reconstruction work is, however increasingly relying on private and corporate investments.

Due to the ever-bubbling activities of the productive sectors and the constantly expanding economy at large, the Angolan financial system has recently undergone drastic changes that resulted in both greater operational capacity and greater range of activities for financial institutions. Against this backdrop, the vision to establish a Stock Exchange with the objective of boosting investment in the country became clearer by the day. In fact, experts in the Nigerian financial market are beginning to predict capital flight to Angola once the operation of its Exchange gets on stream as a number of foreign portfolio investors will divert their funds there.

The whole task of setting up began with the creation of the CMC, Angolan Stock Exchange Commission in March 2005. The CMC is a state-owned entity in charge of regulating, supervising, inspecting and promoting the Angolan financial market and the stock exchange in particular.

Subsequently, there was an approval of Securities Law (SL) to regulate trading in securities, promote an organized and transparent stock market and provide adequate protection for investors.

The SL contains rules on public offerings, securities registration and trading, brokers and other dealers, stock markets, clearing and settlement procedures, investment funds, issuers, listed companies, and torts. The CMC will be supervising compliance to these rules.

Draft regulations were prepared to cover a significant range of matters such as investment in real estates, investment companies, investment funds, brokerage, securities intermediation, public offerings and public companies.

There are also rules for the incorporation and management of locally owned and foreign-owed brokerage firms. The company to be incorporated must be either a joint-stock or limited-liability company. Its purpose must be brokerage activities and it must have a minimum share capital of NKz15, 000,000 ($200,000).

Several representatives from other fully established Stock Exchanges in the world and other international experts were involved in the setting up of the Stock Exchange. The objective was to bring their expertise and knowledge to bear in assisting the local politicians and technicians who make up the task force responsible for its setting up. The Angolan Stock Exchange (BVA) may likely start full operation in the third trimester of this year wi