The world's authoritative source of market indices, Standard and Poor's, in its recent publication of the top 25 performing stock markets in the world for 2003, has ranked the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) third.

The ranking, which was done on the basis of percentage in price indices in US dollar ($), placed Bulgaria and Brazil ahead of Ghana with 200.1% and 142.1% respectively. Ghana placed third with 140.3%.

Kenya and Egypt followed Ghana, placing eleventh and twelfth with 104.8% and 89.4% respectively. In 2003, Standard and Poor's upgraded Ghana's sovereign credit rating to B+.

According to the Chief Executive Officer of GSE, Mr. Ekow Afadzie, the GSE would either maintain or improve upon this performance this year with the listing of more companies on the GSE, especially small and medium scale enterprises.

He said that with fear of losing control and accountability and the reducing cost of listing on the Ghanaian bourse, he expects about 30 companies to be listed by the end of the year.

Touching on the performance of the market for May, he said the companies listed performed well, saying the turnover volume was 5.89 million shares with a value at ?47,079.57 million.

The GSE All-Share index for May was 6,853.00 with a year to date change of 92.86%. The Market Capitalization for the period was ?96,441.28 billion resulting in a 664.39% year to date change.

The ten top best performers were Mechanical Lloyd Company, The Trust Bank Limited, Aluworks, Produce Buying Company, Cocoa Processing Company, Home Finance Company, Ghana Commercial Bank, Guinness Ghana Limited, Fan Milk Limited and Enterprise Insurance Company. Corporate bonds traded on the market was ?25,250.

Meanwhile, Guinness Ghana Limited (GGL) has announced the launch of its offer first announced in December 2003 to acquire all the outstanding ordinary shares of Ghana Breweries Limited.

GGL is offering ?1,425 in cash or 0.134 new GGL shares for each GBL share.