Shawdesh Desk:

Dhaka stocks dropped with the turnover hitting nearly a 30-month low on Sunday, the first trading session of the year 2023, as investors were upset over the floor price withdrawal from a number of companies although the current economic crisis is yet to wane, market operators said.

DSEX, the key index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, lost 11.44 points, or 0.18 per cent, on Sunday and settled at 6,195.37 points as against 6,206.81 points in the previous trading session on December 29, 2022.

The turnover on Dhaka bourse declined by 48.4 per cent and stood at Tk 178.42 crore on Sunday as against Tk 345.71 crore in the previous session.

Sunday’s turnover was the lowest after July 7, 2020 when it was at Tk 138.56 crore.

The market had struggled with the Covid pandemic and various restrictions in 2020.

The market remained positive in early hours of the first session of the year on Sunday, but it failed to maintain the momentum and moved downwards to end the session in the negative zone, the market operators said.

Investors were worried as the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission on December 21 removed floor prices from 169 companies, they said.

Investors now apprehended that the BSEC might withdraw floor prices from the other companies too, they said.

The BSEC on July 28 imposed floor prices on all companies to prevent share prices of the companies from falling beyond a certain level amid economic worries.

The country’s economy has been struggling in recent months with a host of issues, including inflation, dollar crisis, pressure on forex reserves, trade deficit and energy crisis, the market operators said.

Besides, the investors’ confidence in the market dropped amid media reports on the banking sector’s irregularities, they said.

The DSE observed a significant decrease in the investors’ participation on Sunday.

EBL Securities in its daily market commentary said, ‘The capital market of Bangladesh started the year on a gloomy note, with the single-day turnover again falling to a 30-month low as investors are reluctant to inject funds into equities amidst a bleak outlook of the market.’

Among the sectors, pharmaceuticals and chemicals issues exerted the highest turnover, followed by IT and engineering stocks, it said.

Most of the sectors displayed dismal returns, out of which IT, services and travel exerted the most corrections, while ceramic and bank exhibited slight positive returns on the bourse on Sunday.

Out of the 330 issues traded on the day, 19 advanced, 149 declined, and 223 remained unchanged.

The DS30 index also declined by 1.69 points to finish at 2,193.60 points and the DSE Shariah index declined by 3.24 points to close at 1,355.59 points on the day.

Orion Infusion topped the turnover chart with its shares worth Tk 18.05 crore changing hands.

Intraco Refueling Station, Bashundhara Paper Mills, Orion Pharma, Bengal Windsor Thermoplastics, Monno Ceramic, Genex Infosys, Aamra networks, Bangladesh Shipping Corporation and Eastern Housing were the other turnover leaders on the day.