Evaluation of the Dar es Salaam stock exchange performance and market indicators: a case of Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE)

The variety of measures taken by the government of Tanzania since early 1990s aimed at speeding up private investment in the country has made sizable achievements, notably in the financial sector. Tanzania liberalized the financial sector in 1991 with the philosophy behind that the move will increase the volume and efficiency of the financial services. This research, which was carried out at DSE a newly established stock market in Tanzania is on the evaluation of stock exchange performance and market indicators. The performance of this infant bourse is mainly characterised by inactive market competition, low volumes of business, low trading sessions and, low trading deals. This paper has traced the eight years transition period of the DSE and the researcher evaluated its performance indicators so that to ascertain the basic reasons as to why Tanzanians are not participating fully in the DSE activities. Decline of the listed companies’ share prices were also discussed in depth. In all these eight years of existence, the stock exchange has been perceivably characterised by low turnover, low volumes of share, low trading sessions and deals, low market capitalization and inadequate basic information and necessary market indicators, signalling that the performance trend of DSE is not moving at the right pace. The factors, which make the investors, be hesitant to participate fully in DSE activities have been explored in this research. Finding from this research suggest that the existing indicators of the performance of DSE are presently not meeting the information needs of investors in Tanzania.