SEC’s Lim calls on finance execs to help boost capital markets
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) called on the country’s finance leaders to help close the gap in capital market development between the Philippines and its peers.
SEC Chair Francis Lim said this could be done by upholding governance standards and ensuring integrity in their respective companies.
Lim on Friday told members of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex) that the country’s capital markets “have fallen behind.”
He stressed that Vietnam, whose stock market was “much younger,” outranked the Philippines in terms of number of listed companies. Vietnam currently has around 700 listed companies versus the Philippines’ 284.
“The data is not just statistics—they are a mirror of the development gap we must confront,” said Lim, who served as Finex president in 2021. “It underscores how far we have to go.”
According to Lim, the country’s finance executives needed to encourage more companies to list, uphold governance standards in every transaction, ensure integrity of their companies’ financial statements and champion investor protection.
“Your leadership—anchored on ethics—is what will bridge the gap between where our market is and where it should be,” Lim said.
For its part, the SEC slashed fees for document requests by 50 percent last month to make disclosures “more transparent and accessible” to the public. This was Lim’s first major policy reform as SEC chair.
Requests left unaddressed beyond the prescribed period at the SEC will likewise be “deemed approved” to promote ease of doing business.
In December 2024, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said long processes and loose enforcement of governance policies are preventing around 400 private enterprises in the Philippines from braving the local stock market.
