Muhith hits out at 'stock conspirators'

Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday vowed to tame the 'well-known conspirators' of stockmarket that went through a long spell of volatility.
“Everybody knows the conspirators. The government is working to bring them under control,” he said. But the minister did not name the 'conspirators'.
His comments came after Dhaka stocks witnessed the steepest single-day fall on Sunday, with the key index of the premier bourse sliding by 551 points, or 6.72 percent.
The minister made the remarks at an awards ceremony at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka.
SME Foundation organised the event to honour three SME women entrepreneurs.
The finance minister termed the country's stockmarket strange and said: “The index has increased three-fold within a year. The index is increasing by the day. It is an abnormal situation.”
He said the country would not benefit from the increase in the prices of paper shares. “We need to augment production and investment. But that is not happening.”
He also chastised the investors who expect overnight profit. “By investing Tk 10 they immediately want the share price to rise to Tk 12. This trend must be stopped.”
The minister accused some conspirators of putting the country's stockmarket at stake. “For the sake of the stockmarket, we have to rein in the trend of making profit everyday. The conspirators need to be controlled.”
“We have heard and also read in the newspapers that people who took financial assistance as SMEs have invested the money in the stock market,” Muhith said.
He said some people who received assistance for their SMEs invested the funds in the stockmarket sector mistakenly. The market will be stable if they use the assistance as promised, the minister said.