DAR ES SALAAM Stock Exchange (DSE) is tipped to have shrugged-off last week’s decline hangover in volume and turnover to post positive performance as dividend announcement nears.

The bourse total equity turnover dropped by 82.3 per cent to 2.06bn/- for the week ending last Friday from 11.66bn/- in the previous week.

Also the volume of shares traded fell by 86.7 per cent to 530,743 as activities on the CRDB Bank counter slowed down.

Vertex International Securities said in its weekly Market Report that the equity market performance slowed down last week, mainly due to Easter Monday and Karume Day holidays.

“We forecast the equity market to overcome [last] week’s decline in volume and turnover to record a positive performance next week as dividend announcement nears,” the Vertex report said.

Also, the bourse forecasted to remain active, as foreign investors’ participation continues to increase, especially on prearrange trading.

Tanzania Securities said in its Weekly Market Blast that the market will remain active during the week and mainly from the top local active counters.

“This justifies that the market is peaking, and it is expected to perform well in the coming weeks,” Tanzania Securities said, adding: “We have witnessed share price movement in the local counters which amplifies that there is demand in the market that will drive market activities [this] week.”

The Tanzania Securities tipped that CRDB Bank was likely to be the most active counter, and this has been due to its liquidity in the market. “…But despite the strong fundamentals we do not see increase in its share price in the coming week(s),” Tanzania Securities predicted.

The brokerage firm also said other top counters expected to transact this week include TBL, Twiga Cement, NICOL, Jatu, Swissport and DSE.

However, during the week under review, price movement was only recorded on DSE counter, which lost 3.64 per cent to close at 1,060/-. Zan Securities said in its Weekly Market Wrap-ups that the stock market poises to continue its positive momentum this week.

“We anticipate this trend will continue in the coming weeks,” the Zan report said.

Orbit Securities said in its Weekly Market Synopsis that local investors were dominant of the investment side while foreign investors dominated the divestment side after disposed a block of Tanzania Cigarette Company (TCC) shares on a prearranged transaction.

“The block of TCC was totally absorbed by local institutional investors which persists the observation that local institutional investors have been stepping up recently to absorb foreign sales, mostly in prearranged block transactions at significant discounted prices,” Orbit said.

The local investors accounted for 99.98 per cent of the total investments while foreign investors accounted for 97.09 per cent of the total divestments.

The price of the transaction was 6,000/-, a whooping discount of 65 per cent from the official closing market price of 17,000/- per share.

The Tanzania Share Index (TSI) slightly dropped by a mere 0.37 point on account of a slight retreat of the price of DSE.

As a result the domestic market capitalisation went down by 0.1 per cent to close the week at 9.248tri/-, correspondingly, the TSI closed down at 3,517.67 points.

On the other hand, the All Share Index (DSEI) edged up, gaining 17.56 points following a 0.95 per cent growth of the total market capitalisation.

The DSEI appreciation was led by a 5.42 per cent rise in the price of East African Breweries (EABL), along with National Media Group (NMG) and Jubilee Holdings (JHL) which grew by 1.41 per cent and 0.85 per cent respectively.

“There was no negative movement on the cross listed board during the week,” Orbit said. The DSEI and total market cap closed the week at 1,868.83 points and 15.526tri/-.