Stocks hit 2-year low

Hartal called in Motijheel by investors withdrawnThe police on Monday held eight leaders of a forum of share market investors as they called for a dawn-to-dusk general strike today at Motijheel in the capital after the benchmark general index of Dhaka Stock Exchange crash-landed to the two-year low of 4,638.61 points.
The Bangladesh Capital Market Investors’ Council, a platform of small-scale investors, later withdrew the strike on condition of release of its detained leaders including BCMIC president Mizanur Rashid Chowdhury, said its organising secretary Shahadat Ullah Feroz.
The general index of the bourse or DGEN shed 1.51 per cent, or 71.29 points, with the curve falling lower than the previous minimum point of 4,649 points posted on November 15, 2011 since the December 2010-January 2011 market crash.
After a day-long protest in front of the DSE building on Monday, the Bangladesh Capital Market Investors’ Council, a platform of small-scale investors, announced a day-long hartal today.


Law-enforcers, after the media left the spot at around 4:30pm, bore down on the demonstrators.
Witnesses said police cordoned off the area around the DSE building and charged with batons without discriminating between the demonstrating investors and bystanders. They detained 10 investors.
‘The investors were detained for creating public nuisance by blocking the road,’ Motijheel police station officer-in-charge MD Haiyatuzzaman told New Age.
He also said police were preparing a charge-sheet against the detained investors.
BCMIC president Mizanur Rashid Chowdhury and general secretary Kazi Abdur Razzak were detained along with Selim Chowdhury, Ataullah Nayeem, Sazzad Hossain, Nurul Haq Harun, Abdul Hannan, Abu Sufian, Abdul Mannan, and Yakub Ali, confirmed the Motijheel police.
‘Investors will enforce the hartal from 6:00am to 6:00pm in Motijheel area including Dainik Bangla, Dilkusha Commercial Area, and Ittefaq crossing to Notre Dame College,’ Mizanur Rashid told reporters.
The demonstrators on Monday staged a mock execution and mock funeral rites of finance minister AMA Muhith, Bangladesh Association of Publicly Listed Companies president Salman F Rahman, and parliamentary standing committee on finance ministry chairman AHM Mustafa Kamal (Lotus Kamal), holding them responsible for the market crisis.
Demonstrating investors on Monday demanded immediate government steps for stabilising the capital market, with the DGEN losing 37 per cent in last year.
Just an hour after the trading had begun on Monday aggrieved investors came out on the street and started a protest as the DGEN took a nosedive.
They demanded to bring the alleged masterminds behind the stock market crisis to justice.
The demonstrators set piles of wooden materials and paper on fire and brought out several processions that paraded the road from the Bangladesh Bank headquarters to the DSE building.
At around 2:00pm, the demonstrating investors went to different brokerage houses and forced the investors and officials to get out. They urged the investors to boycott trading.
They also demanded resignation of prime minister Sheikh Hasina, finance minister AMA Muhith, Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman M Khairul Hossain, and DSE president Shakil Rizvi.
In last week, the prime minister’s press secretary announced that the government would issue a notice reminding that government employees were not allowed to invest in the capital market.
But, later on Wednesday, the SEC chairman said the government had no such plan.
In contrary to SEC announcement, the public administration ministry through a gazette notification on the same day in the evening ruled that government employees were not allowed to invest in as speculative a market as the equities market as per the Government Servants (Conduct) Rules, 1979. The ministry, however, retracted the notice a few hours later.
The DGEN lost 352 points, or 6.45 per cent, in last week following the government-created confusion about imposing a ban on stock investment by public servants.
Investors have been staging street demonstrations on every trading day since the market turned volatile on January 15.
The DGEN had plummeted from 8,290.41 points to 5,257.60 points, losing 3,032 points, over 2011 while the market capitalisation of the DSE declined by 25.42 per cent from Tk 3,508,00 crore to Tk 2,61,673 crore.