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Business Reporter
The automation of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange has attracted interest from some of the largest international bourses, including the company running the New York Stock Exchange.
In a notice, ZSE chief executive Mr Alban Chirume said four companies had submitted bids to automate the local bourse at the close of tenders on 31 October.
He said companies shortlisted were Chartered Systems Integration, Infotech Middle East FFZ-LC, National Stock Exchange of India and the New York Stock Exchange Euronext.
The interest of Euronext, a company with multi-billion dollar revenues and running a number of securities exchanges in America and Europe, and the Mumbai-based India National Stock Exchange, in the ZSE is a massive vote of confidence in the country which is on the economic rebound.
New York Stock Exchange Euronext is a European-American multi-national financial services corporation which operates a number of securities exchanges in America and Europe.
The National Stock Exchange of India is a demutualised electronic exchange started in the 1990s.
It provides a modern, fully automated screen-based trading system. It has a market capitalisation of more than $0.989 trillion with 1 635 companies listed as of July 2013.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Chirume said the next step was for the ZSE to evaluate the shortlisted companies.
“The evaluation process will take a month and we will come up with an evaluation document,” he said.
The companies would also be asked to do a demonstration of their proposed automated system.
The results of the evaluation were expected in December.
While he would not say much on the companies as the evaluation process was yet to take place, he said on the shortlist were consortiums with local companies.
The ZSE is currently using an outdated manual trading system despite being one of the oldest stock exchanges in the world.
The manual system has been blamed on low trade volumes which are expected to pick when it becomes fully automated.
Currently, daily trading is around $1 million but was expected to pick up to $6 million when the automation is completed.
The ZSE has previously said the automation project would be functional by the first quarter of 2014.
When automated, the ZSE will join other bourses in South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia which have automated trading platforms.
Online Reporter
Bongani Ndlovu