The millennium bug, or Y2K problem, can cause computers to misread the year 2000 as 1900.

A handful of countries -- Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan,Hong Kong, Mumbai -- say their exchange systems are already millennium compliant.

Others such as India's National Stock Exchange, Manila, Tokyo, Colombo, Seoul and Taipei expect to be prepared to deal with the problem by the end of this year.

New Zealand and Jakarta plan to make their trading systems millennium compliant, and Australia sees both of its exchanges fully ready by the first quarter of 1999.

China expects its exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen to be geared to meet the challenge before the end of next year.

Bangkok's stock exchange says its compliance work should be about 90 per cent complete in 1998, with the balance finished next year.

However it is better to fix the glitch.The regions futures and options exchanges -- a newer addition in many countries -- tend to have computer systems that are already millennium compliant.

Mainly afflicted were older computer systems that used capacity-saving lines of code of just two spaces to denote dates. This was not a problem until the year 2000 loomed, raising the prospect that the "00 could be read as 1900."

Countries that have computerised relatively late have benefited.

South Korea's futures exchanges, for instance, opened in the past two years. "Because those two exchanges were introduced after the millennium problem was discovered, they are also compliants," said Chung Kyu-wan, director of system development and operations at the Korea Stock Exchange.

Similarly, at the Bombay Stock Exchange fixing the problem was not an issue because of its young computer system.

"Since we computerised our systems when there was sufficient awareness about the millennium problem, the software we bought was already compliant," said RC Mathur,executive director of the exchange.

It is no surprise that Asias stock exchanges report good progress in fixing the bug. In many countries, they are the key agencies overseeing company compliance and some -- like Australia -- have issued harsh warnings of stock delistings if the Y2K problem is not dealt with.

But the onset of the economic crisis in Asia has raised worries that companies are diverting money for millennium fixes to more immediate needs.

While exchanges should be ready for the millennium, testing their systems will be equally important, an analyst said.

"The majority (of the exchanges) should be doing something, but what percentage are testing?" said Howard Hsu, a senior services analyst at International Data Corp in Hong Kong.

"Most (exchanges) should be in the testing phase by now," he said.

Wall Street tested its systems last month, using a pre-arranged list of participants and simulated trades as the clocks were rolled ahead to December 29, 1999.

The London Stock Exchange willlaunch a series of mandatory tests in October that will include sending and receiving trading and other messages that contain dates.

Tokyo's exchange plans a marathon round of testing with other public bodies, including the Bank of Japan and the Federation of Bankers Association of Japan, from June next year.

The Sydney Futures Exchange said it planned to have all systems compliant and tested, where possible, by the first quarter of 1999.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has set up a task force to oversee millennium preparedness. The group aims to run a large-scale test in February 1999.

Hong Kong's stock exchange will conduct a pilot test in December 1998, followed by three rounds of full-scale tests in January, March and June 1999.

The Stock Exchange of Singapore will carry out simulated Year 2000 testing sometime in August.

In New Zealand, the exchange said it would test its systems.

"We obviously intend to make our current system year 2000 compliant, which we will, and well betesting that as part of our own implementation programme. We haven't made a decision on a replacement," said Bill Foster, managing director of the exchange.