Nepse dips on political crisis, blockade

Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week plunged 21.42 points amid political crisis and India’s undeclared trade embargo. The market that opened at 1,183.48 points on Sunday lost points for the following three days before recovering 12.61 points on Thursday to close at 1,162.06 points. Parmeshwor Bhakta Malla, managing director of Malla & Malla Stock Broking Company, attributed the fall to the ongoing undeclared trade blockade imposed by India and fluid political situation. “However, the Nepal Rastra Bank’s Thursday’s decision to prohibit the banks to count preferential shares as paid-up capital helped the market recover to some extent,” said Malla. He said the central bank provision helped boost investor expectation the banks could issue rights shares instead of preference shares to hike their paid-up capital. Of the nine trading groups, seven posted losses. The manufacturing group (down 152.53 points) led the losers’ side including insurance, hotels, commercial banks and hydropower. Last week’s sole gainer was the development bank group (up 1.86 points). The trading group remained stable at 207.97 points. The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chip companies was down 4.94 points to 251.64 points. Despite fall in the benchmark index, the overall market transaction rose 7.65 percent to Rs2.13 billion. The number of traded shares too increased to 3,765,280 units from 3,075,010 units. Everest Bank Limited posted the highest individual transaction of Rs277.72 million. It was followed by Nepal Life Insurance, International Leasing and Finance, Nabil Bank (promoter’s shares) and Nepal Investment Bank (promoter’s shares). International Leasing and Finance topped in terms of the number of shares traded (451,000 units). Meanwhile, the Nepse registered primary shares of Vijay Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha, Varun Hydropower Company and Mahila Sahayatra Microfinance Bittiya Sanstha. It also listed 500,000 units of debentures of Siddhartha Bank. Source: ekantipur