Monday’s system outage was the third in a span of six months, following similar collapses in January this year and October last year. Market turnover dropped 57.4 percent to Sh369 million compared to Sh865.3 million recorded on Monday last week, indicating heavy investor losses from the system glitch.
Trading was extended beyond normal hours, to 5pm, following restoration of the system at about 3.49 pm having failed to start trading at the usual 9 am. The system outage is the latest in a streak of costly failures in recent years that have left NSE investors counting heavy losses.
The NSE attributed Monday’s glitch to “technical challenges” occasioned by the unavailability of connectivity to the Central Depository System (CDS), which made it impossible to buy or sell shares. “The aforementioned has affected core services including trading of equities and bonds,” said the NSE in a statement.
NSE chief executive Geoffrey Odundo later said extension of trading hours had helped investors to move Sh369 million worth of shares. “The NSE and CDSC are in the process of upgrading our respective infrastructures that will provide more efficient system availability. In the interim we will ensure challenges leading to such failures are addressed,” said Mr Odundo.
Central Depository and Settlement Corporation (CDSC) chief executive Rose Mambo, however, said the problem was restricted to NSE’s automated trading systems (ATS). “We are waiting for a technical report from the system providers on what exactly caused the problem.
All CDSC services were working well, but the NSE ATS was unable to connect to our database,” Ms Mambo said in an interview. The capital markets regulator said it was monitoring the issue. Capital Markets Authority (CMA) chief executive Paul Muthaura said the regulator wants the market players to comply with international standards for infrastructure providers.
