The capital market was neglected, and even stakeholders failed to hold a single meeting for past 15 years to solve the problems and make policies for turning it sustainable as a source of investment, said Mominul Islam, chairman of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE).
He was speaking at a press conference on ‘Present Situation of Stock Market and Way Forward’ at Dhaka Club on Thursday.
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He said, “The capital market has contracted drastically, failing to play the role it was supposed to play in the financial sector. The irregularities and inefficiency we have nurtured for a long time have kept the capital market from being positive.”
The DSE chairman said, “In the last 10 years, a weak IPO market worth Tk 650 crore has come. Good companies are coming in a very few. The number of investors in the market has come down by half in the last 10 years. There are even fewer active investors.”
He highlighted that one of the units to measure the quality of the capital market is the amount of foreign investment. Currently, the amount of foreign investment has come down to below 1.0 percent.
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Although the amount of corporate bonds is shown to be one percent, in reality, it is not more than 0.51 percent. New IPOs, corporate bonds, and mutual funds are the new priority in the market, he pointed out.
The capital market will hold the position of leading and coordinating skilled and trained manpower that will be needed to take the DSE forward.
“We are recruiting manpower with full leadership qualities. We hope that the confidence in the market will be better than before, and investors will come back again. IT security audit is very important. We are revitalizing the DSE website, especially working to digitize the IPO. The bond market is also a management problem, we are working in coordination with the BSEC,” added the DSE chief.
In response to a question, he said, "If the protection of DSE is legal, we will be able to work independently. We do not want CCBL to exist. BSEC, DSE, and CCBL will be respected and are working on this. We give importance to efficiency in recruiting manpower."
Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) Chairman AKM Habibur Rahman said, "The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) is not trying to impose anything on us. We are working cooperatively."
DSE Brokers Association (DBA) Chairman Saiful Islam said that there was no good sign in a decade where professional people are involved in the development of the capital market.
However, “Various positive steps have been taken as a result of pressure from various electronic and print media. It is playing a positive role in the market,” he pointed out.
Regarding decentralisation, he said, instead of this everything is being made dependent on the finance ministry.
Many things are being taken from the hands of the primary regulator and taken under the control of the ministry or the financial institution division (FID). As a result, the stakeholders are facing various problems, he said.