MillenniumIT helps automate Tanzanian stock exchange

Automated Shares (From Lanka Business On-Line) - 04 January 2007 18:58:19

Jan 04, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka's Millennium Information Technologies says they have designed an implemented an automatic stock trading system for the Tanzanian Stock Exchange within a record two months.

The new Automated Trading System and the Central Depository System (CDS) moved the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange's (DSEs) trading from an open outcry auction trading process to a fully automated one in mid December last year, MIT said Thursday.

On the first day of live trading, the DSE traded for two hours with 307 new orders and 123 executions resulting in a turnover of over 821 million Tanzanian shillings (660,000 dollars).

Live trading began on September 11 resulting in record trading volumes of 3,761 trades compared to 759 trades on the same day the year before.

"We are very happy to be able to use this new technology," said Jonathan Njau the Chief Executive Officer of the DSE.

"It is exciting for us to be among the first East African exchanges to implement such advanced technology that is being used by some of the largest exchanges in the west," he said.

The scaleable application is capable of executing 100,000 or even 10 million trades a day says Tony Weeresinghe, Millennium IT's Chief Executive Officer.

Millennium IT says its suite of software for the securities industry together with the company's newly patented software tool, Business Innovation-Dynamically (BID) would help the success of the new trading system.

Tanzania's stock exchange commenced trading activities in 1998, two years after its incorporation.

Currently there are ten listed equities in addition to several Corporate and Government Bonds.