Bourse MD says revenue income was not that satisfactory in 2014
Dhaka Stock Exchange managing director Swapan Kumar Bala on Wednesday blamed Bangladesh Bank for violating the central bank’s own regulations in calculating banks’ capital market exposure. Swapan made the blame at the year-end media meet at the DSE office in the city.
DSE chief regulatory officer AKM Ziaul Hasan Khan and general manager Md Samiul Islam were also present at the briefing.
Swapan said the capital market was now facing some problems and they were working to remove the problems.
‘For example, the BB is violating its own regulations by considering “held to maturity” investment as capital market exposure,’ he said.
He said, ‘We have already informed the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission about the matter.’
Replying to a question on the DSE’s role in attracting investors to the capital market, Swapan said, ‘As tempting investors is not allowed by the securing rules, we have the barrier to doing such job.’
Top thirty brokers at a recent meeting with the DSE informed that the market was on the decline for the last couple of weeks mainly due to huge share sell-offs by the bank-backed institutions on repeated pressure from the central bank to adjust their portfolios.
They also requested the bourse to take proper measures to lessen the BB’s pressure on the institutions.
Based on a circular, the BB in March this year asked all the scheduled banks to submit business plan on how to bring down their excess investment limit in the capital market by July 2016.
Following the directive the central bank also strengthened its monitoring over the capital market-related entities backed by banks.
Replying to another question on the bourse’ business growth in 2014, the first year after its demutualisation in November 22, 2013 , Swapan, said that the revenue income of the bourse was not that satisfactory in the year due to a sharp decline in FDR income and low turnover.
The DSE, however, has managed to tackle the situation by minimising its costs, the bourse’s MD said.
Besides, to gear up its profit the DSE has plan to set up a subsidiary information technology-based company to serve its stockbrokers and to generate revenue income, he said.
‘We hope that the preliminary procedure for setting up the company will be completed within the next three months,’ Swapan said.
The bourse has also planned to launch exchange traded fund and Islamic product Sukkuk, to sell data, to develop separate central depository system for facilitating trading of shares of non-listed companies on a DSE’s separate trading board, to take initiatives to bring reputed companies to the capital market, he said.
Swapan also said that taking over DSE’s charge by the demutualised board of directors and automation of the bourse were the most important developments at the bourse in 2014.
In term of increased indices and foreign turnover the year of 2014 was comparatively better than the previous year, he added.
-With New Age input
