Dhaka Stock Exchange has strongly criticised negative remarks on stock market made by a top government official saying it has misled the market and investment.
“Recently, we have noticed that the market suffered due to some negative comments, which hurt investor investment,” said its director Shakil Rizvi at a press briefing yesterday.
He said: “Such comments without statistics and proof destabilise the stock market that is very sensitive.”
The DSE’s criticism comes four days after Board of Investment Executive Chairman SA Samad at a function said the image of Bangladesh’s capital market is very bad at home and abroad, and is not suitable for a long-term investment and the market might be okay for gambling and rumour-based short term investment.
Without mentioning the critic’s name, Rizvi said every investment has a risk. “But this risk could not be considered gambling.”
DSE’s Acting Managing Director Abdul Matin Patwari said it’s not true that the market has no long-term investment.
“The market is definitely long-term investment-friendly,” he said.
He said for instance the market capitalisation
jumped 31% from over Tk2,00,000 crore in December 2012 to more than Tk3,00,000 crore in December 2015.
During the period, the number of listed companies also increased by 18% to 288 from 243, he said.
Patwari said a number of major steps were taken by Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission and the DSE authorities to help stabilise the market and improve the situation for safer and profitable investment.
These included updating public issue rules, introduction of book-building system, reserving 20.0% quota in the public offerings for small investors and introducing lock-in for sponsors’ stocks offloading.
