BSE cards on the block sold out in a jiffy

After brokers and retail investors, it's the Bombay Stock Exchange's turn now to cash in on the bull run.

The exchange, which until last year was finding it difficult to sell its membership cards, is now reporting good response with nearly all the 27 cards put on the block having been sold.

The exchange was to offer these cards at Rs 65 lakh till February 28 after which it was decided to sell them at Rs 75 lakh per card.

According to well-placed sources in the BSE, there has been good response for the membership cards with 25 cards already sold and allotted.

Most of the applications are from local players, with many sub-brokers also seeking full membership, sources added.

A senior BSE official said, "A total of 27 new memberships were to be sold and we have received 25 applications and two more are expected to come soon."

He, however, refused to divulge any further details. The fortunes of most BSE brokers have turned for the better in the last one year with the Sensex appreciating over 100 per cent.

The index, which was languishing at around 2900 levels on April 25, 2003, is currently trading over the 6,000 levels and comes with a huge jump in the turnover as well.

BSE's total turnover in the first 11 months of 2003 has surpassed the turnover in the last two years by a big margin.

The BSE recorded a turnover of Rs 4,24,315 crore in the current fiscal till February 16, 2004 as against the total turnover of Rs 3,05,343 crore in 2001-02 and Rs 3,13,940 crore in 2002-03.

However, the current year's turnover is way behind the turnover in the 2000-01 Ketan Parekh bull run when the BSE turnover had touched Rs 9,93,443 crore.

A leading BSE broker said things have definitely changed in the last one year with retail investors back in the fray. Even the BSE wanted to encash of this bull run and wanted to finish the process of membership sale as soon as possible so that the amount can be reported in current year's balance sheet."

Another indicator of retail participation increasing has been the significant rise in depository accounts with the National Securities Depository (NSDL).

A month-wise analysis of the trend shows that number of accounts has been rising consistently with an average of 1.5 lakh new accounts being opened every month.

As on 2003-end, NSDL had dematerialised a total of 7,77,490 lakh securities, as against 6,29,390 lakh securities by '02-end. In value terms, it dematerialised securities worth Rs 9,84,600 crore, up from Rs 5,56,100 crore.