The regionalisation of local currency bond markets in the EAC

This project, which is part of Acropolis-BeFinD, studies the Local Currency Bond Markets (LCBM) in the East African Community (EAC), the regional intergovernmental organisation comprising Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. While the six countries nearly all have their own LCBM, these differ in size, depth and organisation. To develop their markets further, enhance cost-efficiency and enlarge investor bases (and as part of their overall regional integration efforts) the EAC countries are looking to integrate their own bond markets through active promotion of cross-listings of bonds on their stock exchanges and a harmonisation of market infrastructure and regulations.

With this project we intend to do in-depth work on the EAC member countries’ government LCBMs. In general, we aim to offer insights into the progress made with respect to the regionalisation of the EAC LCBMs and the remaining constraints in this area. 

We would specifically like to thank the Belgian Development Cooperation (DGD) and the Belgian Embassy in Tanzania for facilitating our field visit in February 2017 and VLIR-UOS and ARES for financing our stay. We also would like to thank staff of the Ministry of Finance, the National Bank of Tanzania, the Capital Market and Securities Authority (CMSA), the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), the National Microfinance Bank (NMB), the Financial Sector Development and Regionalisation Project (FSDRP) of the World Bank, the EAC Secretariat and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for interesting discussions and additional data.