ASE going for more floors

AHMEDABAD, NOV 18: With a view to trebling its daily trading volumes from Rs 175 crore at present to Rs 500 crore by year 2000, the Ahmed...

AHMEDABAD, NOV 18: With a view to trebling its daily trading volumes from Rs 175 crore at present to Rs 500 crore by year 2000, the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange ASE is introducing ten additional trading floors ATFs, including two in Mumbai, through expansion of wide area network WAN. It is also offering fresh membership cards to corporates and individuals.

ASE executive director Rajiv Desai told reporters here on Thursday that these ATFs will come up in Nadiad, Gandhinagar, Surendranagar, Anand, Jamnagar, Unjha and Himmatnagar. As many as 20 WAN connections are operative in the city since June, Desai said.

He said terminals would be provided free of cost by the ASE at these growth centres for one year while the revenue costs would be shared equally. The terminals would be activated at a very nominal charge, which is otherwise paid by members.

Desai said to ensure transparency and risk-free arrangement, transactions would be routed under total surveillance mechanism. Each growth centre or ATF will have at least eight members, from whom a trading volume of Rs 100 crore per day is expected.

As many as 29 new membership cards will be made available, for which the application process has started. Floor price for the card has been fixed at Rs 12.51 lakh, the current market price for the ASE card.

These and other memberships, corporate and composite, would materialise subject to SEBI clearance, Desai said. There are 304 members on ASE at present, of whom 187 are active.

Besides the new memberships, ASE also considering issuing clearing ID to members of other stock exchanges with good net worth subject to SEBI nod. Members will be required to pay double security deposit and bank guarantee than normal card holders, Desai said. This will provide additional liquidity at the ASE which would otherwise remain idle, he said. The ASE has also decided to give complimentary membership to the Saurashtra-Kutch amp; Vadodara Stock Exchanges.

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Capital and revenue costs would be borne by ASE, which expects generation of trade volumes up to Rs 200 crore at these exchanges by means of these cards, he said.

Besides these expansion plans, ASE also proposes to set up its own Internet site in two phases at a cost of Rs 60 lakh. In the first phase, to be completed by December, the site will give basic information about the exchange. By March, the site will provide daily updates of transactions.

Desai also said that ASE has taken all necessary precautions to guard against the Y2K bug. 8220;Now ASE has Y2K compliance clearance from SEBI. Mock runs were successfully completed. New trading hardware and software has been certified as Y2K compliant,8221; he said.