SEC promotes infrastructure projects

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to introduce a novel scheme in the stock market to fund large infrastructure projects in the country.

“During the next three months we will bring in a mechanism to fund the first large infrastructure project in Sri Lanka,” Gamini Wickramasinghe, Chairman SEC told The Sunday Times FT. He explained that the SEC would finance it through the capital market and attract both local and foreign funding.

“This is part of our Capital Market Development Master Plan,” he said, explaining that such a fund raising attempt would take the strain off the banks,. “we also do not need to look for money from other countries.”

He said that the government had to carry out the project and finance feasibility studies for the project. Since last November, the SEC was exploring this listing possibility in a bid to attract more liquidity into the market. At the time, he told The Sunday Times FT the SEC had put this idea across to the Treasury to list infrastructure projects such as the Colombo Katunayake Expressway (CKE) in the CSE to raise capital for the project.

He said that as an example once a road project was completed the revenue could be generated through charging a fee from each motorist who uses it. “These are called toll roads and a popular concept in developed economies,” he said. Wickramasinghe said the SEC is looking beyond its traditional role of regulator to promote companies to list in the CSE.