Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week inched up marginally by 0.2 points to close at 1,113.07 points, after the midterm review of the Monetary Policy by the Nepal Rastra Bank failed to satisfy both bankers and industrialists, with investors still skeptical on banks lowering the interest rates.

With a slight rise in the market index, the average daily turnover went up to Rs646.70 million from Rs607.47 million in the previous week.

The secondary market that opened at 1,112.87 points on Sunday slid 3.15 points on the first trading day to close at 1,109.72 points. On Monday too, the market fell by 7.21 points, before inclining 22.45 points on Tuesday after the central bank revised the threshold of the spread rate to reduce the banks’ interest rate.

However, the market plunged by 12.73 points on Wednesday after bankers and industrialists sounded their dissatisfaction against the central bank’s move. The secondary market concluded its final trading day with a marginal gain of 0.84 points. Eventually, the market added 0.017 percent in overall trading during the review period.

Stock analysts mainly blamed the situation to the central bank policy that failed to attract investors. “The investors who have long been under pressure of exorbitant interest rate, could not be assured to get respite with the central bank’s step,” said a stockbroker under condition of maintaining anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chips companies witnessed a slight fall of 0.31 points to close at 236.6 points.

Even with a slump in the market, the total market capitalisation increased by Rs24 million to Rs1,358.68 billion. Of the trading groups, non-life insurance gained the largest of 36.58 points and closed at 5,342.14 points. The Nepse of hotels also gained 30.22 points. Similarly, life insurance and microfinance were also among the double digit gainers, adding 12.84 points and 10.97 points respectively.  

Likewise, the index of manufacturing increased by 8.5 points and development banks by 0.21 points. Of the five losers, hydropower lost the largest of 14.88 points. Trading lost 6.17 points, ‘others’ lost 4.84 points, commercial bank lost 1.93 points and finance companies’ index went down 1.25 points during the review period.

Regarding the individual companies, Nabil Bank recorded shares transaction worth Rs55.76 million, the largest of all. It was followed by Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower, promoter shares of Nabil Bank, Prabhu Bank Limited and Citizen Investment Trust in the segment.

Last week, stocks worth Rs3.23 billion were transacted, which was 6.6 percent more than the transaction volume in the previous week. The total number of traded shares also increased to 11,957,523 units from 11,224,052 units.

Over the review period, Nepse listed 26,012,365.9 unit shares of six listed companies including Shine Resunga Development Bank, Chilime Hydropower, Kisan Microfinance Bittiya Sanstha, NIC Asia Bank, Century Commercial Bank and Ghalemdi Hydro Limited.