The call for tenders for an electronic trading platform for fixed income securities in the West African Monetary Union (WAMU) has been extended until 31 August. The call is issued by the regional agency UMOA-Titres, which supports the issuance and management of public debt securities by member States of the zone (in French l’Union Monétaire Ouest Africaine, UMOA) and supports market development and training.
The platform will cover over-the-counter trading in sovereign bonds issued by auction as well as the interbank market including money market, repos and other fixed income as well as other negotiable debt securities. This market is managed by the region’s central bank Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) and has been growing since it was set up in 2001.
Originally the tender closed on 10 August but this has been extended to 31 August. Tenders must be physically submitted at the headquarters of UMOA-Titres in Dakar. The language for tender documents, submissions and for the supplied system and support is French.
The announcement of the extension can be found here, which also includes the RFP document in pdf and Word formats and the answers to the questions previously submitted by tenderers here.
According to this story on Ecofin website, transactions on the WAMU secondary market were mainly negotiated over-the-counter using telephone or e-mail. This favours “buy and hold” investment strategies: “The absence of a unified platform to bring together all bids and offers increases costs for searching for counterparties, delays trade executions and decreases market transparency.”
The new platform will eventually be interfaced with the SAGETIL-UMOA central securities depository (CSD) and settlement/delivery system operated by the BCEAO. In turn, the SAGETIL system interfaces with the STAR-UMOA payment system.
The system will manage outright purchase and sale transactions for Treasury bills and bonds, as well as negotiable debt securities without collateral and repurchase (repo) or reverse repo agreements (repo), unsecured lending and securities lending.
The OTC market is separate from the market for Government and other bonds issued by syndication which is regulated by the WAMU Financial Markets Authority (l’Autorité des Marchés Financiers de l’UMOA, AMF-UMOA). Secondary trading bonds is handled by the dynamic regional securities exchange Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières (BRVM) and settlement is through the Dépositaire Central / Banque de Règlement (DC/BR).
Countries in the Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA) include Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo
