Dealers at the Nigerian Stock Exchange

The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Thursday urged local investors not to engage in panic selling following MSCI consultations from its clients on the ease of capital flows.

The exchange stated this in a statement on Thursday.

It  said that the purpose of MSCI’s consultations was not to exclude Nigeria from any of its composite indexes of which “Nigeria is a component (MSCI Frontier Markets Index)’’.

It said that the MSCI announcement on April 29, 2016 would not be to exclude Nigeria from the MSCI Frontier Markets Index.

The statement explained that the announcement would be to decide if Nigerian constituents in the index would be part of the Semi-Annual Index Reviews (Rebalancing) due by May, 2016.

“The feedback from the consultations with their clients will form part of the basis for MSCI’s next Country Reclassification due by June, 2016,’’ the statement said.

The exchange said that “MSCI will usually give considerable time in the event of any decision on any country and will not take any surprise action’’.

The statement stated that the current efforts by the policy makers to boost liquidity in the foreign exchange market would yield results in the short to medium term.

“At the NSE, we are hopeful that the current efforts by the policy makers to boost liquidity in the Foreign Exchange Market will yield results in the short to medium term,’’ it added.

The statement said that the exchange was in constant touch with MSCI, investor community and would continue to engage them on the situation of the country.

MSCI recently said that it was monitoring the accessibility of the Nigerian equities market after the introduction of restrictions on foreign currency trading and the resulting continuous deterioration of foreign exchange market liquidity.

It added that ease of capital inflows and outflows was one of the key criteria in the MSCI Market Classification Framework