DHAKA, Jan 17: Bangladesh's stock exchange operator suspended trading on Tuesday after reports said the government would enforce a ban on civil servants and the armed forces from investing in shares, a bourse official said.

On Monday, state-run BSS news agency reported that the cabinet of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had announced the move to crack down on civil servants and soldiers owning local stocks, upholding a long-standing rule.

'We have decided to suspend trading until further order,' Dhaka Stock Exchange Chief Executive Mosharraf Hossain said, adding that trading at the smaller Chittagong Stock Exchange had also been halted.

'We apprehend the media reports on the move to bar public servants including the armed forces from investing in the stock market could have created confusion among the investors and impacted adversely on the market,' he said.

The suspension was greeted with protests by nearly 1,000 investors who disrupted traffic in central Dhaka and shouted slogans against the government, police inspector Hayat-uz-zaman told AFP.

'Civil servants and the armed forces should be allowed to invest in stocks for the sake of the capital market,' Hossain said.

Bangladesh's government is the country's biggest employer with a million-plus staff and armed forces comprising 160,000 officers are on its payroll. The South Asian nation's population is about 150 million.

The protests on Tuesday came after the benchmark DGEN index declined 3.33 per cent to 4,864.3 points on Monday, the first time it has declined below 5,000 points this year.Hossain said a revenue board decision to ban illegally earned money from being invested in the market also weighed on the Dhaka exchange, which fell 37 per cent last year, its worst performance since 1997 when it slumped 67 per cent.-AFP