PSE working with SGX to provide more products

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Stock Exchange Inc. (PSE), the operator of the local bourse, is working with its counterpart in Singapore to provide more products to local and foreign investors.

The PSE and Singapore Exchange Ltd. (SGX) are strengthening joint efforts to develop listed derivative products that offer international investors greater variety in accessing the Philippine equity market, one of ASEAN’s fastest-growing market.

PSE and SGX are working together to develop new Philippine equity index derivatives for listing on the Philippine bourse. This follows their memorandum of understanding signed in 2013, which paved the way for the listing of SGX-PSE MSCI Philippines Index Futures on SGX in November that year.

PSE president and chief executive officer Ramon Monzon said the local bourse is now laying the groundwork so it can offer the derivative products to investors.

“We are laying the groundwork for development of derivative products to enable PSE to offer a more diverse product line to investors and help us catch up with peer exchanges,” he said.

Monzon said the partnership with SGX would allow the PSE to learn from SGX’s experience in operating a derivatives market.

The PSE chief said there is a need to offer more products to the Philippine stock market to boost liquidity. Toward this end, the PSE has been working to have more products offered in the market. These include the Real Estate Investment Trust listings, more initial public offerings and dollar denominated offerings as well.

SGX chief executive officer Loh Boon Chye said they welcome the partnership.

“We are pleased to broaden our cooperation with PSE to advance the Philippine derivatives market. As domestic and international markets are complementary, this enhances our role in increasing access into ASEAN and emerging Asia, as well as providing tools for clients to manage risk and allocate capital,” Chye said.

ASEAN, which includes some of the world’s best-performing emerging markets, presents immense opportunities for international investors.

If taken as a single country, with a population of more than 600 million, the group would have a GDP of over $2 trillion – ranking it among the 10 largest economies globally.