Impact of Khartoum Stock Exchange Market Performance on Economic Growth: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag ARDL Bounds Testing Model

This study examines the impact of the Khartoum Stock Exchange market performance on economic growth in Sudan from Q1 1995 to Q4 2018. The data were collected from the Central Bank of Sudan (CBS) and Khartoum Stock Exchange (KSE). The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test was applied to estimate the impact of the Khartoum Stock Exchange market performance on economic growth. The results show that the Khartoum Stock Exchange market performance has a limited impact on economic growth. The results of the ARDL test reveal that the speed of adjustment towards long-run equilibrium after a short-term shock, which confirms the stability of Sudanese economic system through stock market performance, equals 24% only. Although market capitalization has a positive and significant impact on economic growth in the long term, the turnover ratio and stocks traded value showed insignificant negative impacts on economic growth. We recommend that suitable investment policies should be developed by policy makers for the Sudanese economy to allow the Khartoum securities market to attract foreign investors and encourage local investors in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the stock market, thus, leading to a boost in securities exchanges as well as economic growth.