Money
Nepse sheds 29 pts on embargo
As the economy reels under the prolonged banda in Tarai and Indian blockade, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) plunged 29.01 points to slip below 1,100 points last week.As the economy reels under the prolonged banda in Tarai and Indian blockade, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) plunged 29.01 points to slip below 1,100 points last week. The secondary market that opened at 1,121.05 points, closed at 1,092.04.
Narendra Raj Sijapati, president of Nepal Stockbrokers’ Association, attributed the fall mainly to the trade embargo imposed by India. “In addition, the investors are also worried about the possible fall in the major banks’ profit in the first quarter due to the non-payment of interest from the borrowers as a result,” he said.
Over the past four days, the benchmark index fell for successive two trading days before recovering 7.67 points on Thursday. Sijapati said the rise in Nepse in the last trading day could be due to the expectation that the dialogue with the protesting Madhes-centric political parties after the election of the new president.
Of the nine trading groups, indices of seven witnessed a downfall. The benchmark of insurance fell 147.46 points, the biggest plunge over the review
period. That was followed by hotels, commercial banks, hydropower companies, development banks, finance companies and ‘others’.
The Nepse of two groups–manufacturing and trading—remained stable at 1,886.14 and 207.97 points throughout the weekdays.
Similarly, the sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chips companies also dipped 6.4 points to close at 235.83.
The secondary market witnessed a transaction worth Rs804.4 million from trading of 1,327,280 shares.
As for the individual companies, Nepal Investment Bank (promoters’ shares) led both in terms of the transaction volume and number of shares. There was transaction of Rs85.6 million out of trading of 105,000 units of the company’s promoters’ shares.
Nepal Investment Bank (general shares), Everest Nepal, National Life Insurance and Nepal Life Insurance were among the top five companies in terms of transaction amount.