16% of Zimbabwe listed companies have working AND up to date websites. Of these less than half have comprehensive investment data on them – data that enables investors to make an informed investment decision. This is at a time when the demand for investment information is high. A time when trading costs on the ZSE have just fallen and more than 60% of the value of share trading on the ZSE is foreign. A time when there are no comprehensive data on listed companies, no automated news or regulatory information systems!
At the time when the economy is coming to its one year anniversary of adopting the US$ as its national currency. At a time when Econet Wireless <> has invested US$66m in optic fibre cabling in Harare and at a time when availability of the web in Zimbabwe is going to improve drastically after March 2010.
I correlated these statistics by looking at the news and investor relations sections of Zimbabwe listed company websites and any investment related data such as share prices etc. on 28 and 29 January 2010.
There appears to be opportunity here for a number of stakeholders in Zimbabwe’s capital markets. The technology exists to sort this out but the levels of awareness and skills possibly not. For a greater insight into Zimbabwean companies read their latest annual reports here.