The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is convinced that the visions of the various political parties relating to the capital market will be beneficial to the market’s growth and are compatible with the Capital Market Development Master Plan. The SET’s policies will thus essentially continue no matter which party leads the next government, and the new administration will be able to utilize the capital market’s full potential to drive the economy forward and strengthen the market further.
Major political parties outlined their visions for the capital market should they form the next government in a recent seminar, “The Thai capital market and promoting Thailand’s competitiveness under the new government”.. Policies worth implementing include promoting the Thai agricultural market to lead the region through merging the Thailand Futures Exchange and Agricultural Futures Exchange, developing the bond market for retail investors, listing quality state enterprises on the Thai Exchange, and promoting the capital market to be the fund-raising center for large-scale utility projects. The seminar was organized by the Federation of Thai Capital Market Organizations.
Other suggestions from the seminars were to continue demutalizing the SET to raise its competitiveness, reducing procedures and time needed in list a company through promoting information disclosure that reflect transparency, revamping tax measures that hinder market development, stricter enforcement of capital-market-related laws, promoting transparency in the capital market, and speeding up education in financial literacy to lay a strong foundation in this area for Thais, who will become quality shareholders and encourage capital market personnel to compete efficiently at the international level.
Demutualizing the SET would help it continue expanding, adding flexibility and facilitate new products, increasing efficiency and making the Thai capital market more attractive to investors, SET President Charamporn Jotikasthira revealed.
“We are confident that the new government will continue to emphasize the capital market, which is a key mechanism in developing the Thai economy,” said Charamporn.
The SET has been pursuing an aggressive approach, as stipulated by the Capital Market Master Plan, since 2009. As a result, there have been significant improvements on the Thai capital market, as shown by the increase of the market capitalization to THB8.74 trillion (approx. USD281.93 billion) as of May 2011, estimate 50 % increase from THB5.91 trillion (approx. USD196.64 billion) at end- 2009. At the same time, the total capital raised during 2010 and 2011 averaged THB8.62 billion (approx. USD278.06 million) per month, a significant rise from the monthly average of THB3.0 billion (approx. USD96.77 million) in 2009.
Moreover, daily trade value also hit a record high of THB32.84 billion (approx. USD1.05 billion) as of May 2011, compared with THB18.22 billion (approx. USD58.77 million) in 2009. In addition, Thailand became “Asia’s best improved country ” in good governance raking has moved up from being 8th to being 4th among 11 nations, based on analysis by the Asian Corporate Governance Association and CLSA securities firm. During the first quarter of this year, the trade value of gold futures on the Thai derivatives market was also the world’s fifth largest.