International organisations, the Association of Global Custodians (AGC) and the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) the Africa and Middle East Depositories Association's (AMEDA) role in supporting efforts to develop central depository in the region's markets. AMEDA has been supporting all efforts that aim to attract foreign capital inflows and investments to member countries of the central depository and registry companies. The AGC stressed the importance of close cooperation with the World Forum of Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) and its member organisations, including AMEDA, regarding the procedures of the Central depository and registry companies' data repository project- CDRI project. AGC is a diversified global organisation that focuses on creating and supporting industry cooperation across the entire custodians' sector worldwide. It is also considered an informal group of 12 banks of global custodians that are major providers of securities services, and related asset service missions, to international institutional investors worldwide. The ISSA also praised AMEDA's vital role to improve the investment climate in financial markets and to attract foreign inflows and investments of member states from central depository and registry companies. It indicated that AMEDA plays a pivotal role in terms of initiatives aimed at creating a suitable investment climate through many axes represented in linking the leaders of securities services, facilitating cooperation in the sector, and creating the best practices approach. The ISSA also highlighted AMEDA's efforts in digitising private market working groups, which in turn contribute to increasing the capital flow and enhancing the ability of any investor to enter capital markets and discuss changes on a global scale. For the ISSA, it aims to connect the leaders of securities services, facilitate cooperation in the sector, and bring about change that positively affects the entire securities value chain. It also aims at focusing on finding advanced solutions to reduce the risks and improve the efficiency and effectiveness, from the source to the investor, in addition, to provide broad-minded leadership to help in shaping the future of the sector. Abdulla Abdin, AMEDA's president, said that the international recognition reflects the association's vital role in developing central depository and post-trade services, clearly enhancing cooperation between the various clearinghouses and strengthening their role for the development of the various financial markets of the member states. AMEDA is keen to actively participate in regional and global organisations, in a way that contributes to developing the financial markets of the member's states and attracting foreign capital inflows to them, in addition to keeping abreast of changes on the global scale on this field, Abdin added. Riham Khedr, secretary-general of AMEDA, stressed the association's goals during the next stage, namely boosting its vital role in developing the various markets of member's countries through the implementation of several future projects. AMEDA is working on implementing the Data Warehouse, which is a regional project to launch 2 servers, to collect the information of all AMEDA members in a single database that will be available to all members, Khedr said. It is proposed to be implemented in North and South Africa during the next stage, she added. Khedr also indicated that Egypt is a strong candidate to host the backup server to be implemented in the North African region. She stressed the importance of this project in supporting AMEDA by having a site or sites for disaster recovery, where the data of all members is safely kept in one or more sites in the region in the case of any member exposure to unusual circumstances such as wars or force majeure. This would be in a way that contributes to speed up the access to it and the acceleration of the pace of business. AMEDA was founded on April 27, 2005, and its first meeting took place in New York before the CSD8 conference. It is a non-profit organisation comprised of Central Securities Depositories and Clearing Houses in Africa and the Middle East. Its main purpose is to be a forum for the exchange of information and experiences among its 40 members, from more than 30 countries, in a spirit of cooperation and to promote best practice recommendations in services such as securities depository, clearance, settlement, and risk management. AMEDA's goal is also to support local markets in their efforts to adopt securities market regulations while considering their specific circumstances and to serve as a dialogue channel with other organisations worldwide.
