The Stock Exchange of Thailand's market capitalisation could grow to 20-22 trillion baht by 2021, driven by prospects of new initial public offerings (IPOs) and the strong performance of currently listed companies, says SET president Kesara Manchusree.
Such a market cap would be tantamount to 150% of Thailand's GDP, Mrs Kesara said, adding that average trading value is anticipated at 100 billion baht within three years.
As of February 2018, the bourse's market cap stood at 18.7 billion baht and ranked as Southeast Asia's second largest behind that of the Singapore Exchange.
The domestic equity market represents 120% of Thailand's GDP, up from less than 100% four years ago, Mrs Kesara said.
"Thailand's equity market has been Asean's fastest-growing market over the past four years," she said, "driven by the bullish outlook of new IPOs and growth of existing listed companies in terms of performance and quality. [These factors] can drive the market capitalisation by 500 billion baht a year."
In 2017, the market cap of IPO shares broke 426 billion baht; 42 IPOs, including property funds, real estate investment trusts, infrastructure funds and companies, listed on the SET and the Market for Alternative Investment.
Besides market cap, market liquidity has grown rapidly based on daily average trading value, Mrs Kesara said, noting that such trading value for this year's first two months exceeded 73.6 billion baht.
"I am confident that by the year 2020 the average daily trading value will hit 100 billion baht," she said.
Mrs Kesara will step down from the SET helm at the end of May as her four-year tenure comes to an end. After a nearly month-long selection process, incumbent SET senior executive vice-president Pakorn Peetathawatchai has been selected to take the bourse's top job as the 13th president.
"The challenge for the next president is how to make [the SET] shine on the global stage," Mrs Kesara said.
The SET has achieved its goal of "making the capital market work for everyone, and the bourse's foundation is strong for solid expansion and moving towards digitisation and innovation in the future", she said, noting that the portion of institutional investors was larger than that of retail investors for the first time in 2017.