The much awaited Dollar Trading Board of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) would be up and running by the end of the year, said CSE Chairman, Ray Abeywardena last Friday, at the Ramada Hotel Colombo. This would allow foreigners to trade in dollars.
He said that this would open up opportunities for regional companies to trade in CSE and later it would be open to Sri Lanka companies as well. Regional countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan too could benefit from this.
Abeywardena said Gulf based mobile company Orridu now operating in the Maldives has come on board to be the first company on this Board. He said that the Board would help Sri Lanka to be positional as a major financial hub similar to Hong Kong or Switzerland.
The CSE Chairman said most of the CSE indicators are improving but it was not enough. “If you take communist ruled Vietnam the daily turnover is in the excess of US$ 88 million and in Bangladesh it’s around US $ 100 million as against the daily turnover of around 6 million a day in CSE. This is 23% of the GDP which is a 6% drop from a few years ago.
“However the daily turnover has increased from last month from 700 million to 900 million. Today foreign inflows have been very strong and have increased to US$ 28 billion. He recalled that 2012 was the record year where the turn over touched 38 billion per year. “The market capitalization which was 2.7 trillion has gone up to 3 trillion today and we need to further increase it.”
Last week the Colombo Stock Exchange recorded the second highest net foreign inflow of Rs 22.8 billion in a given year. Abeywardena said that things were moving positively and they have also got approval for the Delivery VS Payment System (DVP) by mid next year.
CSE CEO Rajeeva Bandaranayake said that they are looking at more ways to woo additional companies to trade in the SEC. “We will be talking to some of the large family owned businesses in this regard.”
He also said they are also talking once again with the government to explore the possibility of some of the State Owned enterprises to be listed. Plans are also under way to host an investment conference in Colombo next March and a Road show in New York end of the year, he said.
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