BAKU: Chairman of the Board of Baku Stock Exchange CJSC (BSE), Ruslan Khalilov, has announced seven strategic initiatives to be followed by it over the next three years, Trend reports. Addressing a press conference dedicated to the BSE rebranding, he said that four initiatives are related to the bond market, while three are related to the stock market. "The first initiative in the bond market is to encourage bond issuance by state enterprises. They have potential in this area, and we anticipate an increase in the share of state enterprises in the bond market," he emphasized. According to Khalilov, over the next three years, the volume of government bonds can increase to 1.3 billion manat ($760 million). The second initiative is to attract institutional investors to the market. The third initiative is to stimulate the issuance of corporate bonds (with growth potential estimated at 1.5 billion manat or $880 million). The fourth initiative is to increase the role of individual investors in the bond market (with a forecasted potential of 280 million manat, or $164.7 million). Regarding the stock market, the following initiatives were announced: - taking necessary measures to facilitate the participation of individual investors in the stock market; - promoting the initial public offering (IPO) of shares from private enterprises, with the anticipated growth of the capitalization of the private enterprise stock market estimated at 500 million manat ($294 million); - launching an IPO acceleration program. To note, the BSE has rebranded. The changes are visible not only in the new logo of the BSE, whose main values are honesty, sustainable development, and partnership, but also reflected in the initiatives of its new strategy (approved this spring), especially in relations with market participants. 'The brand update implies the intention to make the exchange's interaction with market participants and partners more transparent and reliable. These relationships, in turn, increase the Baku Stock Exchange's intern ational competitiveness and open new opportunities in the local market,' the BSE said. Source: Trend News Agency