The Stock Exchange of the Republic of Korea and Singapore will launch a special promotion scheme in east China's Shandong Province, encouraging local enterprises to go public there.

The scheme will be held by the two overseas bourses in Jinan, capital of Shandong, on August 8, 2006, the Xinhua-run China Securities Journal quoted sources from the Shandong Development and Reform Commission as saying on Tuesday.

To date, Shandong has more than 860 shareholding companies, over 700 of which have not offered initial public offering. At present, 25 companies based in Shandong have been listed in Hong Kong, Singapore and other overseas markets, the newspaper said.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the country's securities market watchdog, suspended refinancing of listed companies as well as initial public offering (IPO) throughout 2005 in order to revive the bearish market. Frequent refinancing and IPOs had been blamed for contributing to the slump.

Five companies in Shandong that submitted their IPO applications to the CSRC two years ago are still waiting for the final approval. After China resumed the public offering in its own market this year, no companies in Shandong have been approved for domestic public offering.