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The country's premier bourse will hold a mock trading session for listed treasury bonds soon in a move to activate the long-awaited trading of such government debt securities through bourses.
The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has decided to begin mock trading of treasury bonds as its platform has already been prepared for such transactions.
The development came against the backdrop of a tripartite move taken earlier by the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the securities regulator and the DSE to make the secondary debt market vibrant.
"A session of mock trading for treasury bonds will be held any day. The trading will be conducted through stock exchanges after connecting our platform with the BB's MI module," said a DSE official.
Mock trading is conducted to assess the preparedness of a system introduced for any formal trading.
Presently, only the listed corporate bonds can be traded through the bourses as the data of such debt instruments are preserved by Central Depository Bangladesh Limited (CDBL).
On the other hand, trading of government treasury bonds are not possible through stock exchanges as the central bank is the only depository operator of this debt instrument.
The BB, the securities regulator and the DSE recently formed a committee to submit a report on how transactions of treasury bonds can be activated through bourses.
The committee has already submitted its report which is awaiting approval from the central bank.
Asked, a BB official said the committee's report will be approved very soon to facilitate transaction of treasury bonds through stock exchanges.
The committee has proposed a flat transaction fee per trade to make transactions of bonds attractive, he added.
Earlier, the ministry of finance gave an instruction to introduce trading of treasury bonds through the stock exchanges.
The DSE also took several initiatives to conduct trading of listed treasury bonds through its platform.
Presently, a total of 221 treasury bonds are listed with the premier bourse.
But the trading of treasury bonds has remained suspended for long due to complexities over depository operations.
The market capitalisation of treasury bonds listed on the stock exchange is around Tk 549.38 billion, accounting for around 17 per cent of the DSE's total market cap.
The number of corporate bonds listed with the premier bourse is only two.