State Minister for Finance, Capital Market and Public Enterprise Reforms Ajith Nivard Cabraal called on stock brokers as well as the market players to take every effort at increasing the number of listed companies from the current number of about 200 to 500 firms.
He urged the Colombo Stock Exchange authorities to increase market capitalisation to at least US$ 60 billion within five years from the current meager level of $12.5.
"In 2014, when Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa relinquished to the office, at that time end of 2014, the market capitalization of the CSE was $ 25 billion. By the end of 2019, it has come down to half of that. It was just $12.5 billion. There was a massive drop’, he added. .
‘Then only there will be a capacity which can provide funding, not only to the government sector but to the private sector.", he said.
“The digitalization will take away from the brokers as well as the market players a lot of the paperwork and the mandate tasks that have been so far done by them personally” he pointed out.
The state minister made these observations whilst addressing a special market opening ceremony which was organized on Thursday 17 by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC) and the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) under the patronage of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to mark the Digitalization of the Sri Lankan Stock Market.
(LIN)