The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Thailand expects to start a pilot case applying blockchain to traditional securities issuance in 2020. The plan will be further discussed with the Capital Market Development Fund (CMDF) to request project financing and then set up the blockchain infrastructure for capital market.
Archinee Pattamasukhon, director of the intermediaries policy department under the SEC, said the secretary-general of the SEC will announce the blueprint of the project on November 19, 2019. She said the blueprint will cover all plans for capital market and things to do in the first-phase trial as well as selecting a case study especially the securities issuance on blockchain to be piloted. She added the entire project will be run on the digital infrastructure.
Archinee assured that the first phase will be completed by 2020 with the focus on traditional bonds, but not cryptocurrencies. She said the SEC intends to pick a type of traditional bonds for the project, and all securities issuance process will be digitized. This will range from offerings, securities custody, guarantee, assurance and transfers. These processes will be easy with the technology.
Blockchain utilization is already mentioned in the SEC’s strategic plan and capital market development plan. The budget that will be allocated by the CMDF has not yet been defined. However, the proposal to request the budget will be submitted and deliberated by the CMDF by December 2019.
Archinee further explained that the project is like a central system where everyone can participate, which is different than the existing system where all 44 brokers work on their own with heavy costs of production and difficulty connecting their system with others.
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