Brokers face difficulties in settlement of shares

FE Report (November 2, 2010)

Brokers have been facing difficulties in settlement of shares in the past two days due to recent unprecedented increase in the volume of trade.

After trade, the brokers have to pay for the shares bought and receive payment for the share sold in line with requirements of the Central Depository Bangladesh Limited (CDBL) that provides services including settlement of trades.

"We are facing problem in settlement of trade in the last two days. It takes three and a half hours to settle the payment against the normal time of half an hour," said a stockbroker.

Another stockbroker said: "I could settle two transactions in one minute today, but normally I used to make around 50 transactions in a minute."

The officials of the brokerages were continuing to settle the trade until filing this report at 9:00 pm.

A CDBL official said: "Settlement has slowed down because of rise of volume of trade."

"We have been building our capacity. The situation will return to normalcy today," he added.

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) witnessed huge volume of trade in the last several days. On Sunday, the market witnessed a record transaction of 139929571 shares worth Tk 32.08 billion at the prime bourse. On Monday, however, 110377824 shares worth Tk 22.70 billion were traded.