Sri Lanka’s forex market opts for Bloomberg’s BMatch
The Morning: The Sri Lankan foreign exchange (FX) market has successfully implemented an FX matching platform, as per the initiative taken by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) to foster a deeper FX market.
This platform, which is accessible to all licensed commercial banks, National Savings Bank, and the CBSL, was introduced to enhance price discovery, and to promote greater transparency and efficiency in the domestic FX market.
Accordingly, BMatch FX matching platform (BMatch) of Bloomberg was chosen by the domestic FX market for this purpose.
At present, for the domestic FX market, BMatch facilitates spot transactions in US Dollar against the Sri Lanka Rupee, enabling market participants to place anonymous orders within a central limit order book.
It supports the entire trade lifecycle, including pre-trade price transparency, trading, and post-trade straight-through processing. The real-time executable quotes provided by market participants on BMatch will improve price discovery, allowing participants to make informed decisions.
In addition, the CBSL is provided with the oversight functionality through BMatch, to facilitate its regulatory responsibilities.
Further, improved price discovery in the interbank market leading to market-reflective and competitive prices, will also result in greater efficiency in price discovery for the retail FX market, providing clients with better information, enabling them to make more informed decisions and benefit from competitive pricing.
This initiative highlights the CBSL’s commitment to the development of the domestic FX market, and the CBSL anticipates that this will play a pivotal role in enhancing the transparency and depth of the domestic FX market.
OSL take:
Sri Lanka’s ongoing economic activities have resulted in an overall expansion in the country’s economy resulting in a growth in business/investment opportunities in key economic sectors in the country. Given Sri Lanka’s strategic positioning in the Indian Ocean, the many trade agreements as well as trade concessions enjoyed with many foreign countries have pushed Sri Lanka on the path to becoming a hub in the South Asian region. All these positive developments have resulted in an increasing interest in Sri Lanka by foreign businesses/investors, which in-turn has increased activity in the local money market. The growth in the country’s foreign exchange market has also opened business/investment opportunities as witnessed in Sri Lanka opting for Bloomberg’s BMatch. Foreign financial services and platforms could look at the growing business in Sri Lanka’s expanding economy. With all these positive movements, foreign businesses/investors could confidently explore the increasing business/investment opportunities in all sectors in Sri Lanka including the money market.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/20250318/Z_1 |