The newly appointed president director of the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), Tito Sulistio, promised Thursday he would triple the transaction value at the local stock market to Rp 15 trillion (US$1.13 billion) during his three-year term.

Speaking to reporters following his appointment, Tito said that he would invite more state companies, as well as small and medium-scale companies, including start-up firms, in order to meet the target.

'€œTo achieve this target, we should also create good products and improve listed companies'€™ portfolios, to strengthen local brokers and to enhance surveillance,'€ he said, adding that they will imminently move 380,000 investors in the bourse, since only five percent of them are active traders.

Tito, vice president director of toll road firm Citra Marga Nusaphala Persada, was officially named the top man in the country'€™s stock exchange through an IDX shareholders meeting held in Jakarta on Thursday, replacing Ito Warsito, whose two three-year tenures have now come to an end.

Tito said that the bourse would adopt US stock exchange NASDAQ'€™s '€œdealers-driven'€ scheme, creating a parallel bourse for small-caps and start-ups, where designated market makers would set the prices for each share, in contrast with the existing bourse where prices are purely defined by supply and demand.

NASDAQ has three different market tiers, which includes the NASDAQ Capital Market, an equity market for companies that have relatively small levels of market capitalization with less stringent listing requirements than for larger market capitalizations.

'€œStarting next year we hope 50 firms will enter the bourse and other 30 small-cap companies will enter the new market,'€ he said. The bourse target this year, as set by the previous board of directors and the Financial Service Authority (OJK), is to have 32 firms make their debuts in the stock exchange.

This plan, however, would need new regulations and approval from the OJK to come into effect and Tito said his team would immediately work on the proposal.

He also added that he hoped more state-run firms would enter the bourse to help boost market liquidity.

'€œState-run firms mostly say they want to enter the bourse when the market is good. This is an opinion that needs to be changed, as it is their entries that can actually improve the market'€™s quality,'€ he further added.

Tito'€™s name surfaced as candidate to become the new president director after beating out two other hopefuls '€” Mandiri Sekuritas president director Abiprayadi Riyanto and IDX director for trading and membership Samsul Hidayat. Samsul was reappointed as the IDX'€™s director for corporate listings.

University of Indonesia stock market expert Budi Frensidi said he was pessimistic that Tito'€™s tenure could reach its ambitious plan to increase the bourse'€™s daily trade amount up to Rp 15 trillion within three years. '€œThis will be quite difficult and requires extra work, considering the currently low transaction value,'€ he said.

Budi said the new board of directors has lots of work to do, including market capitalization. He said the current market capitalization stood at around Rp 4,800 trillion, which lags behind from the country'€™s GDP and is even lower than that of big single companies like Apple in the US.

Budi, however, was optimistic that bourse president director-elect Tito would bring the stock exchange to a better level.

Budi praised Tito'€™s vision and mission to persuade state-owned enterprises to enter the stock market, saying this will gain full support from investors and adding that Tito'€™s plan to empower and manage brokers better was the best move to maintain a healthy competition among them.