The capital market regulator on Sunday asked Bangladesh Jute and Commodity Exchange to scrap ‘commodity exchange’ from its name saying that there was no scope of conducting such business without the regulator’s permission. The BJCE is a private company which has recently undertaken a project to run a commodity exchange service, but it did not take permission from the stock market regulator.
The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission took the move as the BJCE had recently announced that it would launch a commodity exchange service soon.
The BSEC letter, issued on the day, said, ‘There is no scope of using “commodity exchange” with any company’s name without getting permission from the BSEC. That’s why the name BSEC has to be changed without any delay.’
The BJCE on November 3 had announced that it was going to launch a commodity exchange service soon.
BJCE chief investment officer Rahman Habib on the day had told New Age that the exchange would start its business soon.
‘The BJCE will conduct a pilot project. We have already got the approval from the jute ministry in this regard,’ Habib had said.
The BSEC was astonished when it came to know that the BJCE was going to launch its business soon as a commodity exchange without taking permission from the commission, a BSEC senior official had told New Age on the same day.
‘Allowing any company or firm to conduct the commodity exchange operation is exclusively under the BSEC’s jurisdiction. But the BSEC knows nothing about it. So far as I know, the commission has received no application seeking permission for commodity exchange operation from any company by that name,’ he had said.
After the BJCE’s announcement, the BSEC on November 5 had formed a single-member committee to investigate the issue.
The BSEC on November 7 had issued a show-cause notice on the BJCE to explain why the latter had initiated a move to run a commodity exchange service without the approval of the commission.
The proposed commodity exchange in its reply to the BSEC had said that BJCE had started the process to run a pilot project after getting approval from the jute ministry on August 8.
As per the ministry approval, the BJCE had been allowed to conduct the pilot project at five purchase centres under the Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation — one each in Madaripur, Pabna and Kurigram and two in Rajbari, the BJCE reply had said.
‘We did not start our function as per the Securities and Exchange Commission Act-1993 or Exchange Demutualisation Act-2013 and if its name conflicts with the BSEC’s rules, then the organisation is willing to change its name as per the regulator’s desire,’ the letter had also said.
-With New Age input
