An average of$1.32 billion of trades took place each session last month on the Singapore Exchange's (SGX) securities market, a 4.3 per cent improvement over year-ago levels, according to data released by the market operator last Friday.

For the first quarter, securities increased 16.7 per cent to $1.45 billion.

Total turnover last month was 4.8 per cent lower year on year at $27.7 billion. This could be due to a shorter trading month, in which there were 21 trading days. In comparison, there were 23 trading sessions in March last year.

The rise in turnove value, which measures the dollar amount of trades done, was largely due to share prices having climbed up over the year.

The number of traded shares, however, fell compared with the previous year.

Average daily traded volume last month declined by 26.3 per cent to 1.8 billion shares. Total volume for the month fell 32.7 per cent to 37.9 billion shares.

For the first quarter, daily average traded volume slid 16 per cent to 2.1 billion shares, while total volume shrank 17.3 per cent to 129.1 billion shares.

In the derivatives market, derivatives daily average volume grew 18.5 per cent last month to 822,594 contracts. For the first quarter, volume increased 36 per cent to 903,761 contracts.

The amount of overnight positions as of end-March stood at 4.7 million contracts, a 9.5 per cent year-on-year improvement.

The SGX tracks open interest, which refers to outstanding overnight contracts, as an indicator of how much money is flowing into its derivatives market.