ECONOMYNEXT – The international arm of India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE IX) has proposed cross listings with Sri Lanka’s Colombo Stock Exchange saying the mechanism will allow issuers to tap a global investor base.
“Definitely, we want to partner with the Columbo Stock Exchange,” Venkataramani Balasubramaniam CEO, NSE IX told a business forum in Colombo.
As cross-border exchanges and trade flows grow, capital markets will follow, he said.
NSE and CSE officials have already met on previous occasions, he said and it was ‘high time’ a partnership was formed.
The NSE IX was open 21 hours and investors from Tokyo to San Francisco could trade during working hours, giving access to a global pool of investors, Balasubramaniam said.
The NSE IX had already formed a partnership with Singapore’s international exchange.
Through depository receipt mechanism, Indian investors could now buy 130 stocks in NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange.
Indian investors were allowed to invest 250,000 dollars abroad, Balasubramaniam said.
Sri Lanka had similar blanket permissions before aggressive flexible inflation targeting and potential output targeting intensified anchor conflicts in the central bank’s operating framework triggering serial currency crises.
Through the Gujarat International Financial Centre Tec City, (GIFT-City) NSE was also looking at a ‘global footprint’ , he said.
Thilan Wijesinghe, Managing Director and Founder of TWCorp said he was associated with a 200 million dollar capital raising through the GIFT-City where Sri Lankan tourism assets were involved.
After the last currency crisis, exchange controls in Sri Lanka had tightened and local investors and companies could not buy dollars and invest abroad.
Funds had to be raised abroad or borrowed from banks or development finance institutions.
India’s GIFT-City was an additional mechanism, which could be accessed after two regulatory hurdles.
The Central Bank had to approve and the finance ministry had to approve, Wijesinghe said.
Sri Lanka set up the central bank in 1950 and progressively tightened exchange controls as money was printed for macro-economic policy and other inflationist objectives, critics say.
Money was printed for rural credit re-finance and to suppress short term and gilt yields, and after the end of a civil war, to suppress bond yields abandoning a ‘bills only policy’ and to push up the cost of living (5 percent ‘flexible’ inflation target) and potential output (growth).
Before setting up the central bank, Malaysian and other plantation firms raised money in Colombo when the country had a East Asia style currency board regime where rates could not be manipulated and the exchange rate was fixed. Some of the first are still listed in the stock exchange.
Meanwhile Balasubramaniam said NSE was probably the world’s largest in terms of the number of transactions handled per day, Balasubramaniam said. In derivatives it was the third largest.
NSE overtook NASDAQ to become the largest IPO fundraising market in the world last year, he said. NSE IX was looking outwards.
“So far, India was looking at what we were forming from inside,” Balasubramanium said.
“And now, actually, we are now trying to embrace the rest of the world. And now we think we can be at par with any global exchange.” (Colombo/June09/2025)