Bursa Malaysia to launch new private market for SMEs

KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia Bhd is expected to launch a new private market, a platform specially designed for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs), on the bourse in the next quarter.

Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Seri Tajuddin Atan, said the new SME market, yet to be named, would allow Malaysian SMEs to have access to capital, thus helping to achieve the target of 41 per cent contribution to gross domestic product by 2020 set under the SME Masterplan.

“The discussion is currently at the higher level and we are in the final stages.

“We hope to have all the go-ahead (in terms) of all regulatory and proper approvals (from Securities Commission Malaysia) by the next quarter,” he told reporters on the sidelines of Invest ASEAN 2017 here, yesterday.

With the introduction of the SMR Market, there will be three trading markets on Bursa Malaysia, the other two being the Main Market and ACE Market.

Tajuddin said similarly to the ACE Market, there would be no specific criteria set for participants in the new SME Market, meaning that there would be no profit track record needed but investors who were keen to participate must be high net-worth individuals.

He said trading activities for the SME Market would follow the ‘light-tight’ rules, whereby “if the rules are too restrictive, maybe we should loosen it, but if it’s too loose, then we will tighten it to make sure the market grows.”

About 98.5 per cent of business establishments in Malaysia are SMEs. — Bernama SHORT-TERM interbank rates closed stable yesterday as Bank Negara Malaysia ( BNM) intervened to absorb excess liquidity from the financial system.

The liquidity surplus in the conventional system fell to RM27.08 billion from RM29.33 billion earlier, while in the Islamic system, it slid to RM8