Allow me to react to a story titled, Capital market players target SACCO funds, published in yesterday’s Business Magazine of The New Times. Capital Market is exactly in line with the Government of Rwanda’s policies because investing in capital markets is also one of the country’s development strategies. I would encourage the public to read carefully Vision 2020, the Rwanda Financial Sector Development Programme Policy, and the East African Community Development Strategy Paper to understand how Capital Market fits into Rwanda’s policy framework.The members of SACCO should also be able to operate beyond improving farms or paying school fees of their dependants. SACCOS, being credit and saving oriented schemes, should be able to invest in long-term products like in shares, bonds, derivatives, etc, traded on capital market.In this way, SACCOs will be able to grow in terms of capitalization and my wish is to see SACCOs growing the level of commercial banks. They can also grown into the likes of Unit Trust of India and why not JP Morgan. Last but not least, SACCOs currently have billions of money on their current accounts, which if not reinvested, could devaluate. To avoid this situation, SACCOs need to invest in long-term products, which is why capital markets are a reasonable option.Emmanuel
