COLOMBO STOCK EXCHANGE TO OPEN A BRANCH IN JAFFNA

11/01/2009 - Colombo: The Colombo Stock Exchange has decided to open a branch in the Northern Jaffna region, to widen its investor base in the post-LTTE era.

This is in response to the demand of Jaffna businessmen and the public in the Northern city who wants to undertake investments in the bourse.

The per capita income in Jaffna is valued high due to various factors such as fertile agricultural land and expatriate flow of funds and therefore, the proposed exchange is considered viable.

The CSE, the main stock exchange in Sri Lanka, is at present, negotiating for a building in Jaffna and is likely to finalise it by the end of the month.

"We are hoping to open this branch in early February,” a CSE official was quoted as saying by the State owned Sunday Observer.

"They are self-sufficient in every way and in addition they also get a lot of foreign remittances from their relatives and they want to re-invest in stocks," a stock broker said.

Chairman of CSE Nihal Fonseka said the exchange overcame the challenges experienced in 2007 and 2008.

He said the performance of the CSE last year despite the All Share Price Index (ASPI), having experienced some volatility during the first few months of 2009, reached historic levels during the post-war period, the newspaper said.

The ASPI recorded a growth of 125.3 percent for 2009, the highest growth recorded by the index for any given year, surpassing the previous record of 118 percent growth for 1991, it said.

The CSE also achieved the highest turnover for a given year by generating Rs 142.5 billion in 2009.

The number of transactions for a trading day also reached a milestone in 2009 when 15,290 transactions were executed on June 18, 2009.

The total number of transactions executed during 2009 - 1.27 million was also the highest number recorded in CSE history, the Sunday Observer noted.

To encourage the rural community for daily transactions, the CSE set up its branch in Matara in the Southern coast of Sri Lanka in 1999.


source - www.zeenews.com