THE Shenzhen Stock Exchange said it will strengthen delisting arrangements for companies on its ChiNext board to keep the market healthy and protect investors amid an economic slowdown in China.

    “The ChiNext board is designed to attract high-growth companies with strong innovation ability and that also means risk. Uncertainty is higher in this market,” Liu Huiqing, executive vice president at Shenzhen Stock Exchange, said Tuesday.

    A weakened economic environment has seen some companies making losses, but the progress toward delisting poor performers and rule breakers has been slow. The first delisting was in 2001, but delisting has been largely suspended since 2008.

    Only 78 firms have been delisted from the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges since 2000 due mainly to successive years of poor earnings, official data showed.

    China issued new rules Oct. 17 to get loss-making companies or those in violation of regulatory requirements to delist, the first time it has offered a variety of ways for poorly performing companies to seek delisting.

    Liu said development of the ChiNext board was slower than she had hoped and the market was still very young compared with international counterparts, but the restructuring of China’s economy could breathe fresh life into its listed companies.

    ChiNext is a NASDAQ-style board that was launched in October 2009, with 387 companies listed at a market capitalization of nearly 2 trillion yuan (US$328 billion) at end-August 2014.

    The Shenzhen bourse is also studying proposals to allow non-profitable Internet companies to list and is working on differentiated rules, such as a stricter controls on who can invest, information disclosure and delisting requirements to control potential risks.

    Domestic media reported earlier that the China Securities and Regulatory Commission would allow some Internet and technology firms with no profits to get listed on ChiNext after staying in the national equities exchange and quotations system for a year. (SD-Agencies)