New SET chief to open floor for SMEs, startups

BANGKOK, June 8 (TNA) - New President of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Pakorn Peetathawatchai has vowed to maintain the SET's policy on promoting a sustainable growth of the Thai bourse and will provide more investment opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups. Pakorn, who took his four-year office since June 1, 2018, made the remarks on June 7, saying that he is also making changes for better by adopting more advanced technologies and innovations to further enhance the efficiency of the Thai stock market comprehensively, covering those on strengthening the SET's human resources and the Thai captial market. The new SET chief told journalists that he will also focus on promoting core businesses of Thailand now, including infrastructure, food, transport, tourism and medical services, as an outstanding selling point of the Thai capital market. Besides, he has set a targeted to further develop the Thai stock market to become comparable with the Singapore stock market by 2023, pointing out that the Singapore Exchange's market capitalization now stands at about 850 billion US dollars, while the Thai bourse's market capitalization stands at about 500 billion US dollars, considered a fast growing stock market. The new SET president anticipated that about 40 more companies should be listed on the Thai stock market annually, raising the SET's market capitalization by 250 billion baht. The new SET president promised as well to address the insider problem to prevent the distortion of information and to promote transparency, while supporing SMEs and startups to equally and completely access to information for the sake of their decisions on investment plans. (TNA)