Rowdy protests on street

Agitated stockmarket investors vandalised this building in front of Dhaka Stock Exchange in the capital after the bourse suffered another price plunge yesterday. Photo: Rashed Shumon

At least 60 people were detained in Motijheel area of the capital yesterday during violent clashes between retail investors and police after the stockmarket saw a massive fall for the fifth day in a row.
“Around 50 to 60 people were detained on charge of their involvement in street vandalism in the area,” said Harun-Or-Rashid, assistant sub-inspector and duty officer of Motijheel Police Station.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the weekly cabinet meeting yesterday directed Home Minister Sahara Khatun to identify those involved in street vandalism over the stockmarket plunge.
"Where do demonstrators get sticks and effigies to burn just only five minutes into the opening of trading?" the premier asked.
She also directed the home minister to pick them and learn how much they invested in the capital market.
A senior BNP leader was blamed for keeping his adherents ready near Motijheel to join forces with protestors after any stock fall, said a minister who was present at the meeting.
Against the backdrop of the current market situation, the government yesterday shelved its plan to offload shares of state-owned enterprises for now.
Earlier on Thursday, the finance minister announced the decision of offloading shares of 21 state-owned enterprises in phases starting from this month.
At the end of yesterday's four-hour trading session, the General Index (DGEN) of Dhaka Stock Exchange plunged 473 points, or 7.8 percent, to 5,579 points.
With this fall, the DGEN dropped down by around 2,000 points or 26 percent in the last 11 trading days, and from its highest value of 8,918 points as of December 5 of last year, the benchmark index lost 3,339 points or 37 percent.
The DGEN yesterday came down by over 300 points .The streets of Motijheel turned into battlefield just around 30 minutes into the opening bell of the stock trading at 11:00am.
Seeing the free fall in share prices, thousands of aggrieved investors came out of their trading houses and started demonstration in front of Dhaka Stock Exchange building blocking roads from Ittefaq intersection to Motijheel Shapla Chattar.
The rowdy investors set fire to tyres and vandalised some vehicles including a police van and beat up the van's driver Joynal Abedin.
They also set fire to Madhumita building and the cables hanging in front of the DSE, and vandalised glasses of different brokerage houses inside the Madhumita building.
The agitated investors pelted brickbats at police while the law enforcers answered with the thrown brick chips. During the clashes police hurled at least eight teargas shells and charged batons to disperse the demonstrators.
The agitation stopped vehicular movement in Motijheel for over three hours, till around 3:30pm.
The demonstrating investors complained that rather than the government taking initiative to bring back normalcy in the market, some influential ruling party leaders had been making negative comments, which eroded investors' confidence further.
Investors in Chittagong also staged demonstration at different places following the steep fall in stock prices in the port city bourse.
The DGEN came to a 12-month low yesterday, influenced by panic sale especially by individual investors.
However, the institutional investors were on a selling spree, but their tiny efforts were not enough to offset the huge selling pressures, said market insiders.
Market analyst Akter H Sannamat said, "Different kinds of comments panicked investors and led them to sell their shares even at losses."
The continuous falling trend is not a positive sign for the economy as well as for the social structure, he added.
He also said the government should come forward with bailout programme to restore investors' confidence and make the institutional investors more active.
Yesterday's selling pressure was so massive that 207 issues touched their lowest price of circuit breaker that does not allow a stock price to go down or up by a certain limit on a single trading day.
At the end of trading, only three securities were in black, while 246 were in red on the DSE that traded more than 6.87 shares and mutual fund units on a value of Tk 663 crore.