Central Bank, partners enhance market transparency in Uganda

By Our Reporter

The Bank of Uganda (BoU), Refinitiv, the financial markets data and infrastructure provider and the ACI Financial Markets Association of Uganda have announced that they will be working together to strengthen Uganda’s trade lifecycles, setting up the country for increased global markets participation.

Announcing this in Kampala on Thursday, the partners said that the market’s entire interbank network now has increased capacity through Refinitiv’s fixed income call outs. Fixed income callouts, a Refinitiv trading platform, was launched in Uganda in 2017 and enables multiple counterparties to have real-time price discovery across bonds and bills, helping to foster transparency, latency, and liquidity. This is in addition to risk and compliance solutions, and various other holistic enterprise and trading solutions that Refinitiv already provides to the market.

Nadim Najjar, Managing Director for Middle East and Africa at Refinitiv said, “We’ve had the pleasure of accumulating in-depth knowledge and understanding of Uganda and Africa as a whole having been operating in the region for many years. Our long-standing relationship with the Central Bank of Uganda and ACI has enabled the Regulator to have insights on market activity including full visibility of market drivers and challenges through our real-time coverage.”

“We are excited to be working with Refinitiv and the ACI Financial Markets Association to foster a centre of excellence in our operations and to drive innovations in our market. Refinitiv’s real-time data coverage will help us to establish price stability and encourage objectivity and transparency in the market,” said David Sajjabi, Director: Financial Markets from BoU

“ACI Financial Markets Association is continuously enhancing good market practices aimed at maintaining global standards and our collaboration with Refinitiv and the Bank of Uganda is a continuation of our efforts. It is exciting to see the innovation in this space, such as that of Refinitiv’s Fixed Income callouts,” said Benoni Okwenje, Chairman, ACI Financial Markets Association, Uganda.

Refinitiv, one of the world’s largest global providers for financial market data and infrastructure is well known for significantly improving market monitoring, execution and transparency.

In addition to Uganda, Refinitiv has also rolled out fixed income callouts in Kenya, Zambia and Mauritius improving efficiency for trade lifecycles and strengthening East Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands’ capabilities and reach for global markets participation.

Refinitiv is one of the world’s largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure, serving over 40,000 institutions in over 190 countries. It provides leading data and insights, trading platforms, and open data and technology platforms that connect a thriving global financial markets community – driving performance in trading, investment, wealth management, regulatory compliance, market data management, enterprise risk and fighting financial crime.