16 March
MYANMAR’S Yangon Stock Exchange is mak-ing last-minute preparations for foreign investors who will be allowed to trade shares on the bourse from next Friday.
Procedures started last week for foreign investors to open securities accounts so they can start trading on the first stock exchange in the Southeast Asian country, which was set up in 2015 with the support of Japanese companies.
At present, only five compa-nies are listed on the YSX bourse, which is operated by a joint ven-ture of the government-affiliated Myanmar Economic Bank, the Daiwa Institute of Research and Japan Exchange Group Inc.
With stock trading now limited to domestic companies or investors, Myanmar’s finan-cial authorities said in July last year they would lift the ban on trading by foreign investors, a move aimed at injecting momen-tum into the stagnant stock exchange.
On March 6, the Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry, as well as the Securities and Ex-change Commission issued an instruction saying, “The actual start of trading by resident and nonresident foreigners shall be set at March 20.”
However, it is likely that only a small number of shares will be traded by foreigners at first as some listed companies, depending on industry sector, re-quire approval from Myanmar’s supervisory authorities for stock sales.
“We want to hold stocks for the long term and contribute to the Myanmar economy,” said Hideki Matsushita, a Japanese investor who opened a securi-ties account in the name of his firm in Yangon.
The Myanmar authorities urged investors to follow the country’s securities exchange law for daily trading, and securities companies to comply with the country’s anti-mon-ey laundering law and coun-terterrorism law, as part of efforts to ensure a stable and sustained growth of the bourse. —Kyodo News
