Trading at SME board kicks off

A long demanded stock trading board for small and medium enterprises kicked off today at Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges.

With the ring bell ceremony stocks of Nialco Alloys is going to be traded at the board.

SMEs had repeatedly been urging the BSEC to give a chance to raise funds from the stock market.

The commission appeased those demands by passing a rule in 2018 that allowed all companies with paid-up capital of between Tk 5-30 crores to raise funds from the stock market.

The small-cap board, called the DSE SME, was rolled out on April 30 in 2019 with a view to facilitating small- and medium-sized enterprises to raise funds, which were shut out from the process before that for their lower turnover.

In April, Nialco Alloys, one of the SMEs got the nod to go public and traded at the board.

It raised Tk 7.5 crore from qualified investors.

SMEs are now allowed to meet their financial demand by raising funds from the stock market, said Asif Ibrahim, chairman of the Chattogram Stock Exchange.

“This is a historic moment.”

Entrepreneurs should prompt to get fund from the equity market, he added.