Last year was quite challenging for all industries and economy in general with Sri Lanka going through its worst economic crisis post-independence. However, through the crisis the CSE performed relatively well and although the market itself did decline and reverse some of the gains of the previous year there were some notable achievements Dilshan Wirasekara, Chairman Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) said.
One positive through this entire crisis was the growing confidence of foreign investors in the market and had an all-time high foreign investment coming into the country in excess of Rs. 50 billion which is quite a significant achievement.
The CSE as an institute remained profitable and is on a solid footing from a financial perspective since we need to make significant investments into software development, infrastructure and market education and the CSE is in a fairly sound position to do that.
The market itself, although it declined 30%, offers good upside in the medium term for investors because of the lower valuation and the Lankan market continues to be one of the cheapest markets and even though these challenges our market valuations are attractive. Rajeeva Bandaranaike • Chief Executive Officer at Colombo Stock Exchange said they were working on introducing new products this year and the first of these would be the regulated short selling, stock broking and lending and they have started the work on this and were hoping to go live at lease end of the first half of 2023 and on the cards also is the development of the debt market such as the launch of green perpetual and high yielding bonds and the secondary trading of corporate debt and a lot of work has been done on those fronts and some of the regulatory frameworks have been agreed upon with the regulator and the CSE.
He said in terms of improving risk management they would implement the central counterparty system which will be done through the incorporation of another subsidiary of the CSE, CSE Clear and has been already incorporated with the approval of the regulator. A new grievance handling procedure will be introduced and when investors do complain an independent panel would be established to hear complaints and investor grievances which would strengthen confidence of investors in the process and market.
He said they would continue to improve the quality of information disseminated trough listed companies and continue their focus on improving non financing reporting and would come up with a guideline for companies of non-financing reporting as well.
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