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Luanda. – Angola, sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy, won’t start equities trading until 2017 because firms need to improve their accounting records, the country’s markets regulator said.Inadequate corporate-governance practices and a lack of an educated financial culture and proper negotiation systems are delaying the development of the shares market, Patricio Vilar, executive administrator of the Capital Markets Commission, said at a conference on Friday in the capital, Luanda. Government bond trading will begin this year, corporate debt in 2015 and futures trading will follow the stock market, he said.

“Companies are not prepared and they have to organise their accounting. Some need to be privatised and to be more transparent to go public,” Vilar said.
African markets from Johannesburg to Nairobi rallied this year as investors sought returns in emerging markets. Angolan equities trading was slated for 2016 after an earlier target of next year, Archer Mangueira, chairman of the CMC, said in a June 2013 interview. Officials have discussed plans for a stock market since before the 2002 end of the 27-year civil war. The southwest African country, the continent’s second-largest crude-oil producer, expects its stock exchange to have a market value of 10 percent of gross domestic product within 18 months of its start up, Mangueira said last year.

Angola’s $122 billion economy is forecast to expand 5,3 percent this year, according to International Monetary Fund. The country will earn $68,4 billion this year from petroleum exports based on a Brent price of $100 per barrel, the IMF said.

“The start-up of the shares market depends not only on us but also on the preparation of companies,” Pedro Pitta Groz, executive administrator of the Angolan exchange known as Bolsa de Divida e Valores de Angola, said.

The country’s largest banks, which include Banco Angolano de Investimentos SA and Banco de Poupanca e Credito SA, as well as mobile-phone companies Movicel Telecomunicacoes Lda. and Unitel SA are expected to list shares on the exchange. – Bloomberg.