MARKET

Market regains healthy momentum

The market momentum picked up through the week’s trading with the ASPI making a sharp gain of 114.5 points at Tuesday’s close and continued its steady upward movement.

The ASPI recorded a week on week gain of 447.21 points or 8.7 percent to close at 5,563. The MPI has regained to close at 5,863 up 118.41 points or 2.06 percent as against last week. Total turnover recorded for the week is Rs 11.88 billion recording a 27.19 percent increase from last week’s value of Rs 9.34 billion, however on a lesser volume of shares, indicating a shift in investor interest to high value stocks led by Ceylon Investments, Aitken Spence, Carsons and Bukit.

Trading volumes have declined to 279 million, a 10.5 percent drop from 311.8 million shares traded last week. Contributors to market turnover this week were the Banking and Finance sector contributing 17.9 percent, Investment Trusts amounting to 17.33 percent and the Diversified sector contributing 16.85 percent of the total turnover for the week.

Banking sector index gained 491.47 points week on week with DFCC contributing Rs 449.5 million trading within a price range of Rs 280.20 to Rs 300.00.

Trading in the investment trust was led by a 10.62 percent stake of Ceylon Investments changing hands from Carsons to Ceylon Guardian Investment Trust increasing the latter’s stake in CINV to 66.89 percent. CINV is the top contributor to Turnover this week amounting to Rs 1.08 billion or 9 percent of total turnover while JKH has contributed 8.45 percent of week’s total turnover value.

SMB Leasing topped the list of heavily traded stocks this week with 29.8 million shares changing hands while Dialog which was the highest last week, traded 28.4 million shares this week to come into second place. Piramal Glass traded 18.2 million shares this week.

Foreign investors continued to be net sellers this week amounting to an outflow of Rs 733.16 million as against a net selling of Rs 596.85 million last week. Foreign purchases amounted to Rs 1.4 billion while foreign selling amounted to Rs 2.1 billion. DIST and DFCC shares accounted for significant foreign selling which was picked by local institutional investors. Foreign trading levels indicate an improvement this week with both buying and selling showing a growth of 48.05 percent and 38.33 percent respectively as against last week’s declines.

Morisons (NV) is the top price gainer for the week gaining 60.21 percent to close at Rs 1241.60. LOLC, Three Acre Farms, Morisons (X) have also recorded significant price gains week on week. Top losers were Merc antile. Shipping losing 14.24 percent and Convenience Foods losing 10.06 percent, followed closely behind by CIT losing 9.47 percent.

Point of view

Overall market activity levels have shown a considerable improvement this week after last week’s subdued status with investors rallying on positive earnings.

We expect this momentum to continue backed by earnings potential and investors reacting positively to the share splits announced by Aitken Spence and Watawala.

The anticipation of further corporate announcements of capital restructuring by similar counters or high value stocks aimed at increasing liquidity in the market will stimulate market activity during the week ahead.

We expect the overall momentum to remain positive during next week’s trading.

ICTA and private sector on target:

More villages get IT facilities

Technology and Research Minister Tissa Vitarana paid a glowing tribute to the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and the private sector for their role in making the benefits ICTA accrue to people islandwide.

“We must congratulate both the ICT Agency for the e-Sri Lanka Program which has been forging ahead successfully despite various problems and the private sector for joining in to advance ICT in this country”, the Minister said addressing the inaugural session of the 28th National Information Technology Conference organised by the Computer Society of Sri Lanka (CSSL)S in Colombo recently.

The two-day conference “ICT 2.0: ‘Empowering Sri Lanka to a New Social Order’ had more than 24 paper presentations and was marked by a distinguished panel of speakers.

Minister Vitharana said the President had made a historical input into the concept of Nenasalas by having them set up in places where devotees of the major religions of the country congregate.

Due to that input today 601 Nensalas are successfully spread across the country in a manner that is people friendly. The Minister added that if not for that village-friendly cultural change initiated by the President the Nenasalas would have been restricted to an elitist society as internet cafes even today.

These Nenasalas are complemented currently by 257 Vidatha centres. Plans are under way to have a Vidatha centre in each of the 331 administrative areas,” the Minister said. The Minister emphasised that it was encouraging that an all-out effort was being made both by the Government and private sector including the Computer Society of Sri Lanka to make peoples’ lives comfortable through ICT.

Speaking as Guest of Honour Secretary to the President’s Lalith Weeratunga praised the national endeavour of making people’s lives comfortable through ICT. “The cause behind the success of this great set of activities is also the Head of the Country, the Head of State, the President.

The President has taken a lot of pains thoroughly” interested in seeing that every child in this country has access to ICT,” he said.

Relating a true anecdote from Mahavilachchiya Weeratunga recounted how the knowledge of computers a daughter of a 60 year-old farmer had imparted to her father had paid great dividends.

The benefit the farmer gained included the reading of ten minutes old news in newspapers on the internet instead of travelling five kilometres away to get to know at best only 18-24 hour old news.

The President’s Secretary also called for efforts to create as many e-villages, like Mahavilachchiya, as soon as possible and to reach 60 percent ICT literacy by 2012, both targets set by the President.

CSSL President Chrysantha Silva, Tata Consultancy Services Limited India Vice - Chairman and former CEO S. Ramadorai, Novell India/Sri Lanka Country Head Sandeep Menon also delivered addresses at this inaugural session.

All set for Cyber Security Week 2010

All arrangements have been made for the Cyber Security Week (CSW) 2010 to be held in the first week of September with a new look.

Organised by the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Response Team (SLCERT), a subsidiary of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), CSW 2010 will be a rare opportunity for awareness creation about cyber security issues. The cynosure of the CSW 2010 will be a triduum, with the third Annual National Conference on cyber security on first September and the Technical Workshops one and two held respectively on September 2 and 3.

Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo will be the venue of the conference and the two workshops with the confab scheduled to begin at 8.30 and the workshops at 9.00 a.m. and end at 5.00 p.m. “New generation, new threats, be secure,” is the theme of the conference. Workshop one will cover “Implementation of Secure Networks”, Workshop two will focus on “Making web application secure”.