Tuesday, 15 December 2009 09:01 DAP-NEWS
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
PHNOM PENH, Dec. 15 (DAP) – Cambodia and the South Korean developer World City Co Ltd singed early this month to build a $6 million construction for the country’s first stock market, director of the financial industry department at Cambodia's Ministry of Economy and Finance said on Tuesday.
Mey Vann said the four-story on the 6,000 square meter of the four-story building, which located on the former muddy land at the north of Phnom Penh’s outskirt, will be completed in the next eight months.
It took months before reaching a final approval of the building design model, which shows the culture of Cambodia and Korea. The project has been bit slow as the result of financial down turn began last year.
“We do not have to wait until the construction to complete. We will have our temporary office of the stock market in the ministry of economy and finance," Mr. Vann told DAP.
“We cannot afford to rent an expensive office.”
“We will begin our operation of the stock market by the end of February in 2010," he said.
The idea of a Cambodian stock market, which has been floated since the 1990s after the UN sponsored election.
A numbers of seminars about the bourse have been conducted since last month aimed at raising awareness about the coming stock market, which is an unprecedented for the country went through 30 years of war, which was ended in 1998 the same year that Pol Pot, architecture of the Khmer Rouge, died.
The exchange expected to start small with just four or five companies issuing about $10 million worth of shares each, Intyo Lee, project director for Korea Exchange, has said.
Korea Exchange <.KS11>, Asia's fourth-largest bourse operator, will own 49 percent of the exchange and is recruiting and training workers for it. Cambodian will own the rest.
The country passed the stock market law in September 2007.
Korea has pledged $1.8 million in aid and technical assistance from the Seoul stock exchange to get the Phnom Penh bourse off the ground. Overall, the launch would cost $15 million, the government officials said.
As many as 400 companies are thought to be possible candidates for flotation in the nation of more than 13 million populations.
Much of Cambodia's economy is dependent on agriculture, although it has some proven off-shore oil and gas reserves, a vibrant garment industry and booming domestic construction and telecommunications sectors.
Cambodia’s growth has been remarkably high in recent years was nearly double digits.
Cambodia’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) reached between $3 billion to $4 billion in 2006 and 2007.
The country’s attracted nearly 2 million visitors last year. Cambodia expected to produce oil by 2010.
South Korean company’s officials said they decided to invest in Cambodia following its “serious research on the country’s politics and economic.”
“When we were in South Korea, every one was thinking about the past violence of Khmer Rouge.” Khmer Rouge was blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million during their rules in 1970s.
“We were then really afraid to open business in Cambodia, but actually when we came here we realized that it is really safe,” said Yunyoung Lee, director of the marketing division, told reporters.
“So we want to start our project of stock market before others will.”
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