aning the companies often have less access to capital for expansion projects. The launch of the new market doesn't mean the disappearance of each country's local exchange. The Santiago Stock Exchange, the Colombia Stock Exchange and the Lima Stock Exchange will continue to operate normally. After two years of planning and plenty of delays and bickering behind the scenes, regulators recently gave the new exchange the green light. MILA's organizers, which include the three nations' local bourses, are hyping its potential. "This dream...is now crystalizing after a two-year journey," said the Colombia Stock Exchange in a statement Friday. "This will be the era of opportunities." The market will include some of Latin America's bluest blue-chip commodity stocks and others, including Chile's largest retailer Falabella (FALABELLA.SN), Peru copper giant Southern Copper Corp. (SCCO) and Colombia's state-controlled energy company Ecopetrol (ECOPETROL.BO), which is riding atop that country's oil boom. Daily trading volume in MILA could reach $300 million during the early stages, officials have said. But on the trading floor trenches in Santiago, Bogota and Lima, there is plenty of uncertainty mixed in with the optimism. "We've already been in a testing phase with MILA and will, in reality, continue to be for some time," said a trader in Santiago who asked not to be named. "True integration will only come when we've leveled tax, regulatory, reporting and other issues." MILA is designed to work something like this: A retail or institutional investor in say, Colombia, who wants to bet on a company such as Chile's LAN Airlines (LFL, LAN.SN) will simply call her local broker who, in theory, will be a trained expert not only on Colombian companies but also those of Chile and Peru. The Colombian broker would then put in a buy or sell order on the MILA exchange, and a brokerage firm in Chile, in partnership with the Colombian broker, would execute the order in Chile's local currency. But some brokerage firms acknowledge that cross-border agreements between brokerage