The Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onu Monday commended the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on its efforts to grow the economy through innovations. Onu, who gave the commendation while inaugurating the N500million Data centre of the NSE in Lagos, noted that the Nigerian bourse would compete with the best exchanges in the world in a near future.
In his speech, the Chief Executive Officer of the NSE, Oscar Onyema said the data centre is a state of the art tier 111 centre designed to support the activities of the stock exchange and the entire ecosystem that wants to co- locate with the exchange.
He added that the centre would enable NSE expand its services by providing hosting services beyond the borders.
Meanwhile, trading at the stock market resumed on bearish note yesterday as the Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index (NSE ASI) depreciated by 0.90 per cent to close at 36,317.31.
The depreciation recorded in the share prices of Dangote Cement, Nigerian Breweries, GT Bank, Zenith Bank, and UBA was mainly responsible for the loss recorded in the index. Investors traded 348.11 million shares worth N2.98 billion in 3,276 deals.
The three most actively traded sectors were: Financial Services (291.61 million shares), Oil and Gas (28.54 million shares), and Consumer Goods (12.87million shares), while the most stocks were: Custodian and Allied Insurance (190.55 million shares) Oando (27.37 million shares) and Access Bank (14.94million shares).
In terms of sectoral performance, three sectors closed lower while two appreciated. The NSE Oil & Gas Index led gainers, advancing 0.3 per cent due to renewed interest in Total Nigeria (+9.1 per cent). Likewise, the NSE Insurance Index rose 0.2 per cent on the back of price appreciation in Continental Reinsurance (+3.9 per cent). Conversely, the NSE Banking Index led the losers with 1.6 per cent as investors took profit in GTBank (-3.0 per cent) and Zenith (-1.3 per cent) while the NSE Consumer Index and NSE Industrial Goods indices closed 1.4 per cent and 0.2 per cent lower due to losses in Nigerian Breweries (2.6 per cent)and Dangote Cement (-0.5 per cent) respectively.
