MANILA - THE Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will soon offer a gold certificate trading scheme to boost liquidity and to tap the investing potential of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), said an official of the local bourse.

PSE director Vivian Yuchengco said the new investment vehicle will appeal to Filipinos based overseas since it will give them the opportunity to generate higher returns. She explained the offering will behave like a spot commodity market, although only gold trades will be accommodated at the moment.

“Filipinos abroad like to earn big. That is why they get caught in pyramid scams. The exchange is looking at gold certificates which is another product that will give OFWs the earnings they want,” said Yuchengo.

She said the gold certificates will be guaranteed by the BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) and the bourse is targeting implementation “in a couple of months.”

For his part, PSE president and chief executive officer Francis Lim said the exchange is exploring several avenues to tap Filipinos abroad, noting that their profile has changed from unskilled laborers in the past years to professional workers.

He said as much as two-thirds of the earnings of Filipinos abroad are either spent or saved in their host countries. In 2008 OFWs alone remitted $16.4 billion to the Philippines.

“If we can get part of that [remittance], then that will really help with the liquidity in the local stock market,” said Lim.

Yuchengco said the gold trading scheme may eventually be expanded to include other minerals such as copper and nickel although these are longer-term goals. In addition, the bourse is exploring specialist trading, a product targeted to foreigners which is also seen to boost the domestic equity market’s liquidity.

Apart from offering new products, the PSE said investor education remains at the top of its agenda in promoting the local market.

On Wednesday the PSE inked a partnership with Thompson Reuters that will allow the multinational organization to revamp the content of the country’s first electronic display board carrying real-time stock-market information.

The P45-million board, mounted on the façade of the Insular Life Building along Ayala Avenue in Makati City, will carry more investor “friendly” information. For instance, new features will include company names spelled out instead of their ticker codes as well as additional data like volume per share, index sectors in terms of volume and breaking financial news provided by Reuters.

Apart from the Makati board, the PSE is also looking at other locations around Metro Manila and even the provinces as potential locations for similar electronic boards.

“We want to create more awareness. Anything on stock market, [many people] think the stock market is only for the rich and chosen few,” said Lim.

Analysts say after overcoming the current economic crisis, the local market is likely to emerge much stronger. Companies in the Philippines, for instance, remain competitive relative to their regional counterparts.

“[Shares in] Philippine companies are cheap in the context of the region, [and] Philippine balance sheets are much stronger now than during the last downturn,” said Stephen Corry, Asia-Pacific Investment strategist at Merrill Lynch.