SME Board on the stock exchange likely by this year
Now that a separate trading board for Board of Investment (BOI) companies will be a reality, plans by the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) to create a similar board for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) is taking shape. The CSE together with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a joint initiative have made far reaching progress on this, CSE officials said.
“We’ve been working on this for about four months and will be making progress this year,” a CSE official told the Business Times, indicating that they are likely to set this up towards the year end.
He said a decision is pending on whether this board will be more favourable to listing debt or equity. “CSE officials visited the BSE Ltd (Bombay Stock Exchange) and some of us went to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) on a fact finding mission and things are on track,” the official said.
CSE officials have been discussing SMEs ‘extensively’, according to CSE officials. “We conducted forums in this regard with the National Chamber of Exporters, Export Development Board and the Industrial Development Board,” a CSE official told the Business Times. He added that this awareness creation exercise has been ‘more than’ successful.
By mid this month the BOI Board in addition to the existing Main Board and the Diri Savi Board is slated to be launched with projects ranging from solar power, hotels and aluminum can manufacturing. This new board aims to allow the BOI companies to list on a separate board without having to wait three years to list on the CSE’s Main Board as is required now. Firms with a BOI status and a capital of US$10 million are allowed on this board, according to the draft rules.