Govt considers mobilising market makers

KATHMANDU, MAR 4: 

The renewed promise by the government and the regulator to introduce measures to stabilise the market resulted in the Nepse index going up by 4.77 points, this week –– February 26 to March 1. 

At a recent meeting held between the finance ministry, Securities Board of Nepal and central bank governor there were discussions held on mobilising existing institutional investors such as Citizen Investment Trust, Employees Provident Fund and Rastriya Beema Samiti to work as market makers in order to absorb the supply of excess securities.

On Sunday morning, the stock market opened at 312.59 points and declined to 312.46 points by the end of the day. The next day there was a slight dip but on Tuesday the benchmark index reached 314.69 points. From then the index 

scaled to 317.36 points by the end of the week.

A total of 451,320 unit shares worth Rs 114.6 million belonging to 116 companies were traded in 5235 transactions at the stock exchange throughout the week. Trading volume this week increased by 273.45 per cent as compared to that of last week when the stock exchange witnessed only two days of trading.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of class ‘A’ companies went up by 0.44 points reaching 78.21 points at the end of the week. The float index, the indicator of the performance of actual shares traded, went up by 0.38 points to 24.65 points.

Unilever’s stock price increased by Rs 198, which resulted in the manufacturing subgroup gaining 38.14 points. Nepal Telecom earned Rs 8 per unit share which led to the others subgroup rising by 8.23 points. Commercial banks went up by 7.92 points while insurance companies and hotels gained 4.73 and 2.17 points, respectively.

Bishal Bazaar’s gain of Rs 69 per unit share pushed the trading subgroup by 5.91 points.

Source: THT