Trades down on Fiji's South Pacific Exchange

One of the world's smallest bourses, Fiji's South Pacific Stock Exchange (SPSE), has had a disastrous year with its market capitalisation falling 13.68 percent. 

SPSE has just 17 stocks including one, Fijian Holdings, that can only be traded by ethnic Fijians, and Fiji Sugar Corporation which has been suspended since October. 

Exchange chief executive Jinita Prasad said in her review of the year that over all market capitalisation fell to F$778.2 million ($549.4 million), down 13.68 percent on the year previous. The number of trades were down 8.40 per cent. 

"Buy to sell ratio was around 1:16 on average during 2010 signifying a bear market with a huge dominance of sellers applying a downward pressure on prices," Prasad said. 

"We saw a year of mixed investor sentiments where some investors disposed their shares to fund their cash needs and the others concentrated on the fundamentals of listed companies and continued to hold. Existing listed companies continued to be tightly held which also dampened the level of trading." 

She said this year "looks quite promising in terms of the number of potential companies" wanting to list. She attributed this to a decision taken by the military regime to keep the corporate tax rate of 20 per cent for listed companies that have more than 40 per cent local equity shareholding.(Michael Field, Stuff.co.nz)