SEOUL– Leading presidential candidates on Monday vowed to dispel the undervaluation of local stocks as they promoted their election pledges to upgrade the country’s financial market.
Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) and Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) introduced their plans for investors as they attended a New Year opening ceremony of the Korea Exchange in Seoul.
Lee said he will try to secure transparency in the market, so that some 10 million individual investors in the country do not feel they are betrayed or left out.
“It is an undeniable fact that our capital market is ‘discounted’ very much,” Lee said at the ceremony. “Getting rid of the cause (of the discount) and normalizing our capital market are ways to increase the country’s wealth and also ways to provide investment opportunities to our people.”
To overcome so-called Korea discount, referring to undervaluation of local stocks, Lee called for the country’s massive investment and robust economic revival policies to generate new growth opportunities.
“Changing a crisis point to a rebound opportunity is the government’s most important job and is the certain way to grow the capital market,” he said.
Yoon said he believes the country’s existing political and economic systems are also the reasons behind the Korea discount.
“We need to continuously improve transparency in local firms’ governance structure and low credibility issues in accounting,” Yoon said. “We also need to make sure of people’s retirement savings invested in the capital market and reap the benefits by fixing tax and related systems.”
Yoon added the country should try building a healthy market environment where foreigners can make their investments for a long time safely and also where the rights of small individual investors are not ignored.
He called for stern punishment on stock manipulation and warned against anti-corporate sentiment.
“We are seeing a rise of populism and regulation moves that shackles firms’ business activities recently,” he said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency