THE Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has partnered with the University of San Carlos (USC) to introduce a course that will lead students to become Certified Securities Specialist.
Hans Sicat, PSE president and chief executive officer, said the increasing interest of Cebuanos to participate in the capital market as one of the high yielding investment channels should be complemented with the right types of skills and a high level of understanding of what’s happening in the stock market.
USC signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the PSE last Thursday to make the university the first school in Cebu to offer the specialized course.
Sicat said that PSE may consider partnering with other universities in the future.
“The expansion of course offering to other universities will, however, largely depend on the movement of demand,” he said.
He added that despite the aggressive effort of PSE to promote stock market investment to the mainstream market, only about .5 percent of the Philippine population has participated in the capital market.
online portals
“On the flipside, however, PSE has noted a tremendous increase of Filipino investors trading in the market through the different online portals provided for by the PSE and brokers. They’re going more online,” he said.
Their figures showed that as of last year, online accounts grew by 12 percent.
Aside from its active partnerships with the academe to further develop the capital market in the Philippines, PSE is also tapping the different online channels such as social networking to make more Filipinos aware of the opportunities in the capital market.
“Off-the-cuff, the exchange is hoping to hit five million investors to trade within the exchange in the next few years,” Sicat said.
active investors
Today, there are only 575,000 investors actively trading in the country’s capital market.
About 50 percent of these traders are Filipinos, while the other half are foreign stock market investors.
“Although the interest is very high among capital market savvy investors, we hope that ordinary Filipinos, or even the monthly earner individuals will be able to appreciate the stock market as a way of building up their savings.”
Today, the country’s capital market registered an average daily trading value of P11.5 billion, which is a huge jump from only P5.4 billion levels 18 months ago.