Fed up with lack of initiative from nominated representatives on the board for reviving the Calcutta Stock Exchange and stagnant business, a large number of brokers have begun surrendering their C-star terminals.
"We have been paying a monthly rent of Rs 2500 for using terminals at the exchange's contingency pool, which was a waste as there was hardly any trading opportunity. We could not sell or buy even 100 shares of any company as there was very little depth in the market," a broker said.
Most CSE members have now taken National Stock Exchange terminals either by becoming a member of that exchange or hiring terminals from existing NSE brokers by paying a nominal deposit of Rs 50,000 or Rs 100,000, another member said.
With the emergence of this trend, the average actual daily turnover in main counters like Tisco, Satyam, HLL, ITC and others had come down to 100-200 shares a day.
The current turnover of about Rs 5-6 crore (Rs 50-60 million) a day at C-star is largely coming from punching transactions by those wanting to take advantage of the Union Budget proposal for 2003-04 in respect of capital gains.
Transactions are mainly concentrated to a few selected finance company shares, a broker pointed out.
"We have lost all hope on the existing board, dominated by nominated directors, who have done nothing in the past one and a half years. Elected broker directors have practically no role to play for reviving the exchange," a broker director said.
Explaining the scenario, the members said earlier it was expected that the authorities would expedite the process of CSE becoming a subsidiary of NSE to introduce derivative trading platform once the turnover tax issue was solved.
"Almost three months after we paid ToT and the issue was practically solved, the directors did nothing in this direction."
Another broker, however, came out in support of the directors saying, "What could they (nominated directors) do if Securities and Exchange Board of India itself did not want to revive regional bourses?"
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