The server of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), the country’s premier bourse, has again been hit by a technical glitch, leading many stockbrokers to take about 12 hours to settle shares transactions after the end of Sunday’s trading session.
At least 63 brokerage houses faced this difficulty in Sunday afternoon, several DSE sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Although the shares of daily transactions are settled between 3pm and 3:30pm every day, the DSE could not settle the transactions of these brokerages till 3 am on Monday due to this technical error, they told The Business Post.
The stock exchange’s IT capacity has now been in question as the bourse witnessed repeated technical glitches in recent years.
To this end, the DSE on Monday formed a three-member probe committee to look into the reasons that caused technical breakdown at the bourse in recent times.
The committee led by its director Rubaba Dowla, will submit its report in 15 working days.
Professor Dr Hafiz Md Hasan Babu, chairman of the DSE on Monday told The Business Post, “We are looking for a permanent solution to this technical difficulty. We already have formed a probe body over the issue. Alongside, we are also working on the IT disaster recovery to bring an end of such a problem.”
The technical glitch of DSE’s stockbrokers has been settled and trade transactions were made as usual on Monday, as per a DSE press statement issued yesterday.
According to the DSE, the technical glitches of all brokerage houses were resolved before the start of Monday’s trading. After finding a problem Sunday night, a technical team worked and resolved it, and the problem-facing houses also successfully participated in their trading activities on Monday.
Talking to The Business Post, DSE’s Acting Managing Director M Shaifur Rahman Mazumdar said, “The report generation for DSE FlexTP (4 silos) was in trouble in Sunday afternoon; later the APP team along with the FlexTP resolved it. Finally, the report was generated and sent to the brokerages after midnight.”
Affected brokerages said if the problem was not resolved by Monday morning, they would not be able to participate in the DSE trading on Monday.
Earlier, in August 2020, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), the regulatory body of the country’s capital markets, had formed a six-member committee to look into the causes of a major technical problem occurred in the website and trading system of the Dhaka Stock Exchange that time.
The committee was headed by Mustafizur Rahman, professor and CSE department chairman of the Dhaka University.
After that, the DSE had been in talks due to multiple technical glitches that halted or disrupted the trading. Following those events, its chief technology officer was sent on forced leave as the regulator ordered an investigation.
The committee looked into the causes behind the issues and glitches in the DSE’s state-of-the-art website and the transaction method, as well as their impact on the stock market.
The committee also worked on finding the persons responsible for those problems. At the same time, it had shown ways to solve such problems in the future.
From the last three years, stock investors suffered from a slow-moving DSE’s new website for many days. As a result, normal trading activities got hampered.
Currently, the Dhaka Stock Exchange and its trading technology provider – Nasdaq Technology – operate the DSE server.
The bourse had sold a 25 per cent stake to a Chinese consortium that includes the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges. The consortium did offer its free trading technologies to the Dhaka bourse, but it seems barely interested in them.
