(Posted by CAAI News Media)
PHNOM PENH — The global financial crisis has caused Cambodia to push back its plans to open a national stock exchange this year, officials said Wednesday.
Cambodia signed an agreement last year with representatives from South Korea's stock exchange, the Korea Exchange (KRX), Asia's fourth-largest bourse operator, to establish a stock market in 2009.
However government officials said Wednesday that the Southeast Asian nation was not ready to go ahead with the plans due to the world financial slowdown.
"We are not ready in terms of capital... amid the financial crisis situation," said Mey Vann, director of the industry and finance department at Cambodia's ministry of finance and economy.
The new date for launching the stock market had not been set, he said, but the country planned to start operations or trading in late 2010, he told AFP.
"A stock market is good for our economy. It helps collect money outside the banking system for the investment," Mey Vann said.
While still among one of the world's poorest countries, Cambodia has emerged from decades of conflict as one of the region's rising economies.
But after several years of double-digit growth fuelled mainly by tourism and garment exports, Cambodia was buffeted by last year's global economic downturn.
The International Monetary Fund in September predicted Cambodia's economy will contract 2.75 percent this year amid the slowdown.
By comparison the economy grew by 10.25 percent in 2007 and was projected at 6.5 percent in 2008, according to the IMF. Last year's figure is still to be fully established.
Cambodia remains a largely cash-only economy and a high degree of mistrust keeps many people hoarding their money at home instead of using banks.
Nearly one third of Cambodia's 14 million people survive on only 50 US cents a day or less.
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