Trading volumes on Sudan’s budding stock market are expected to record 100 percent rise this year as a result of Gulf Arab investors’ interests in the capital market.

The head of the Khartoum Stock Exchange, in an interview with Reuters Thursday, said this comes as a direct effect of the Khartoum bourse's recently launched computer-based trading system in January with assistance from Oman.

Since its launch, it has ended the writing of bond and stock prices on white boards.

It is not the first time the stock exchange would be getting assistance from Gulf Arab; since its inception in 1995, it had benefited received assistance from Gulf Arab bourses such as Dubai, Muscat.

Since the commencement of the computer bourse trading, the stock market has witnessed rise in volumes for shares and bonds which have increased to double the amount it recorded at the end of 2011, general manager Osman Hamad Khair said.

"We are expecting trading volumes to at least double this year," he added.
Furthermore, the introduction of the new trading system has translated into a record 13 new firms being listed, adding to the 40 previously listed firms.

Risk-willing foreign investors from the Gulf region currently make up about 25 percent of trading, a number that was on the rise despite Sudan’s economic woes with annual inflation hitting 37 percent in June.

The need for Sudan to develop its stock market with latest technologies is pertinent to attracting foreign investment to the African Arab nation - investments that will help overcome the severe economic crisis that has triggered protests against high inflation.

With the help of India, Sudan is also planning to set up hopes to set up a trading platform for gold due to its rising importance for the nation's economy, and to compensate for the loss of oil revenues - following the country’s split from oil-rich South Sudan - which previously made up 90 percent of exports.