THE VALUE of shares listed on Slovak capital markets is only 3 per cent of the country's GDP, the lowest of any member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where the average is 120 per cent of GDP, a report prepared for the Slovak government says.
By comparison, the value of shares listed on capital markets in Poland is 15 per cent of that country's GDP, and in the Czech Republic and Hungary 19 per cent.
Since 1997, the number of both new issues and of regularly traded issues in Slovakia has been so low that the stock market cannot be regarded as a source of capital for businesses, the report says.
The only element of Slovakia's capital markets that is prospering are open mutual funds, concludes the report, which was produced by the Financial Markets Office.
