Money
Microfin, insurance cos fuel Nepse
The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) increased 15.91 points to close at 1,151.38 points last week.The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) increased 15.91 points to close at 1,151.38 points last week. The secondary market, which opened at 1,135.47 points on Sunday, fell 3.52 points on Monday before gaining 10.22 and 9.21 points over the next two days.
Stockbrokers have attributed the growth mainly to the positive political development and investors’ attraction towards stocks of microfinance and insurance companies.
Priya Raj Regmi, president of the Nepal Stockbrokers’ Association, said the demand for stocks of microfinance and insurance companies had pushed the index. With the micro-finance companies announcing dividends from 10-62 percent, investors have been drawn towards their stocks. For example, Nirdhan Utthan Micro-Finance Development Bank has announced a dividend of 62.91 percent, while Nagbeli Micro-Finance Development Bank has declared 55 percent dividend.
Dharma Raj Sapkota, managing director of Swornalaxmi Securities, however, said that the surge in Nepse was due to an increase in demand for shares with the possibility of easing the trade embargo by India. “The rise
in investor confidence has fuelled
the market growth. This has pulled up the benchmark along with the demand,” he said.
Indices of six out of the nine trading groups registered growth over the week, with the benchmark of insurance group surging 191.64 points—the biggest of all. It was followed by development banks, commercial banks, hotels, hydropower and finance companies.
With a drop of 1.18 points, ‘others’ was the only loser last week. The indices of manufacturing and trading groups were stable at 1859.08 points and 207.97 points respectively.
The sensitive index, which measures the performance of blue chips companies, also inched up 3.11 points to close at 246.54 points.
Despite rise in the Nepse index, the transaction volume declined 17.83 percent to Rs1.83 billion.
Sapkota pointed out the shortfall in trading days this week as a cause for the low transaction volume. With a public holiday on Wednesday, the secondary market was open only for four days.
However, more shares changed hands over the week, with the number of traded shares hiting 3,474,710 units, up from 3,909,370.
Among the individual companies, at Rs141.97 million Nepal Bank shares recorded the highest turnover in terms of the transaction volume.
National Life Insurance, NIC Asia Bank, Garima Bikas Bank (promoters’ shares) and Prime Commercial Bank (promoters’ shares) completed the top five list.
Garima Bikas Bank (promoters’ shares), with a transaction of 523,000 units of shares, was on top in terms of number of traded shares.