The Tea Exporters Association (TEA), the private sector body dedicated to promote tea exports will conduct a workshop on 'Tea Strategy Development' in each stakeholder sector of the tea industry to achieve the revenue target of US $ 5 billion by 2020.
The workshop will be held on Tuesday, February 18 from 2.30-6.30 p.m. at the Export Development Board auditorium, Nawam Mawatha, Colombo 2.
Minister of Plantation Industries, Navin Dissanayake will inaugurate the session while the Chairman, Sri Lanka Tea Board, Chairperson, Export Development Board and senior officials in the relevant state organisations will also participate in the workshop.
The workshop will help stakeholders and policymakers to understand the future needs of the tea industry and map-out a plan to ensure its sustainability. It will also focus on four key areas of the tea sector such as new business models for plantation and manufacturing sectors, marketing of Ceylon Tea in today's context, current trends and prospects in the global tea market and implications of exchange rate fluctuation on the tea industry.
The panel of speakers include Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Mangala Boyagoda, Lasantha Abeywickrama, Roman Scott (Singapore), Roshan Rajadurai, Anil Cooke and Anil Alwis while Niraj de Mel will be the moderator. The event is open to all stakeholder members of the tea industry and for service providers such as banks, freight forwarders and logistics companies.www.sundayobserver.lk
By Duruthu Edirimuni Chandrasekera
In three months the Colombo stockbrokers are set to have their systems integrated and hi-tech making it seamless for them to transact. This will lead to Delivery versus Payment, Central Counter- party along with risk management that will lead to new products being introduced such as short selling and derivatives, officials said. ”Short-selling for an example will form some level of mitigation from the downward slide that the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is now experiencing which helps traders to profit in a down market or protect existing investments while securing risk management feactures,” Ravi Abeysuriya, President Colombo Stock Brokers Association (CSBA) told the Business times. He said that (share transaction) order management and broker back -office systems will be in place by April 31.
He added the infrastructure in Sri Lanka’s capital markets have been stagnant for the past decade and it’s time they’re uptodate. CSBA has proposed a mobile solution to the recording system that was incorporated into the stockbroker rules in August 2012 by the CSE which stipulates the brokering houses to use a telephone recording system to record clients’ order instructions and maintain these records for at least six years. “This is to be introduced to fill the gap in recording mobile phone calls (when clients give instructions on Mobil transactions).” Mr. Abeysuriya noted that the absence of a professionally managed non captive large institutional investor base in Sri Lanka is an enormous challenge. The main long term superannuation funds are largely captive and are saddled with conflict of interest.
He added that if the ‘indispensable’ State Owned Enterprise (SOE) reforms are brought about, it would lead to a mixed ownership structure and more transparency, management efficiency and reducing the dependence on taxpayers. “This would classify the CSE as a more developed and mature ‘emerging market’ that is widely tracked by foreign investors and considered to be active and liquid than a ‘frontier market’. CSE would be included in the MSCI Emerging market Index with the listing of a few SOEs and many large and successful companies.” Mr. Abeysuriya added that as a result, a significant amount of foreign investors that replicate the MSCI Emerging Market Index (tracked by investors managing about US$8 trillion in assets) would have invested in Sri Lanka.
“Several new products such as Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS) and Exchange Traded Funds would have been listed in the CSE, providing retail investors wider flexibility and an avenue to gain entry into the real estate market with a small amount of capital and liquidity to exit. These would have led to increasing the depth and breadth of the market and increasing the market capitalisation of the CSE as a percentage of GDP at least to about 50 per cent.” The capital market in Sri Lanka is under -owned by domestic investors versus its emerging market peers. Only 6.5 per cent of the Rs. 3.1 trillion market capitalisation of the CSE is owned by institutional institutions such as EPF, ETF, Insurance Companies and Unit Trusts. “This needs to change,” Mr. Abeysuriya added.
www.sundaytimes.lk
By Duruthu Edirimuni Chandrasekera
The Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is to implement a risk based Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR), which would ensure that stockbrokers retain an appropriate level of liquid capital in relation to the total risks faced by them when trading in securities, officials said. The CAR will replace the present net capital requirement of Rs 25 million each for the 29 stockbroking houses in a move that will see the industry players consolidating, they said. “The SEC approved the CAR last Friday at their Commission meeting. We will make a presentation to the stockbrokers and the plan is to implement it before June,” a CSE official told the Business Times. He said a certain formula on the CAR will be implemented.
Industry analysts pointed out that this will push smaller players to join with their larger counterparts. They say that it’s a good move as the market is too small for 29 players and consolidation has to happen. Ravi Abeysuriya, President Colombo Stock Brokers Association (CSBA) told the Business times that the CSBA feels that there are too many stock broking licences. “The CSBA is very much for consolidation. The stock broking industry would have transitioned into universal broking and become more viable with the consolidation of the industry with increased trading volumes and broking fees which are market determined.”
www.sundaytimes.lk
The Tea Exporters Association (TEA), the private sector body dedicated to promote tea exports will conduct a workshop on 'Tea Strategy Development' in each stakeholder sector of the tea industry to achieve the revenue target of US $ 5 billion by 2020.