RI to have integrated capital market data

The Indonesian stock market will have an integrated data warehouse before the end of the year, paving the way for the country to join the planned ASEAN stock exchange, a top official said.

Capital Market and Financial Institutions Supervisory Agency (Bapepam-LK) chairperson Nurhaida said Thursday that the data warehouse would integrate files from Bapepam-LK, the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), the Indonesian Clearing and Settlement Agency (KPEI) and the Indonesian Central Securities Depository (KSEI), and consist of the data of listed companies, securities firms, mutual funds, investment managers and bourse transactions, among others.

“Later, the Bapepam will channel files from the data warehouse according to the needs of each institution — the bourse, KPEI and KSEI. Currently, each has its own data. Our target is the end of October of 2011 or early November,” she said.

Nurhaida said the data integration will ease supervisory activities as the data for one firm — from its directors to commissioners as well as transactions — will be readily available so when “a firm does a corporate action, it will show up in the data warehouse, so affiliated transactions could be detected”.

The basic infrastructure of the data warehouse will be completed before the end of the year. But, Nurhaida said it will take some time to fill in the warehouse with the necessary files because the files will need to be standardized first.

“Some of the data is electronic and some is not. Some is well-structured, some is not. We have to standardize the data in the first place. There is a lot of data at the Bapepam that has not been structured, but we can do it. We will transform non-electronic and non-structured data, that way we can pool it in the system,” Nurhaida said

The data warehouse system is expected to ease Indonesia’s integration process towards the ASEAN Exchange Linkage, although Nurhaida said Indonesia was not currently ready for the program.

“ASEAN bourse linkages are probably not yet [ready to be realized]. We are still reviewing the time frame as to when we will start thinking about the matter. Our internal stock exchange and capital market still have a lot of homework to do before gearing up for the ASEAN integration,” she said, adding that once the “homework” had been dealt with, Indonesia will determine the time frame for the ASEAN linkage.

As part of the market integration plan, four Southeast Asian bourses (Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand) have recently announced their plans to develop the trading link that is expected to go live by the end of 2011 to boost trading volume and allow investors greater access to other markets in the region.

Observers and market players have said that Indonesia was not yet ready to link its stock exchange with other neighboring countries because it lacked the basic technology infrastructure to support the plan, with some estimating Indonesia to be included in 2013 at the earliest.

The stock exchange’s president director Ito Warsito said Thursday that technology-wise, if the data warehouse could be completed before the end of the year, Indonesia could join the ASEAN stock exchange link in the next one-and-a-half years, or in mid-2013.