Nepse sees surge on final trading day

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: The government's anti-market target of keeping Nepse above 345 points, seems to have worked, as the benchmark index in the last quarter of the current fiscal year stayed over the target.

The stock market index increased by about seven points at the end of the current fiscal year as compared to the previous fiscal year. The last day of the fiscal year saw the Nepse index surge by 6.24 points. The benchmark index closed at 389.72 points on the last trading day of fiscal year 2011-12 — up by 23 points as compared to last fiscal year’s closing of 362.85 points.

The stock exchange had started this fiscal year on a promising note by increasing by almost 20 points on the first day. However, for a major part of the year, the index kept slipping down even touching 300 points in March. But after mid-April, the positive political development had pushed the index up to as high as 432 points.

Due to the prolonged bearish slump, the government had set a target of 345 points as the psychological point, and also hastened the start of institutional investors, mutual funds, central depository system and credit rating agency, but before any of these could come into existence the market pulled itself up.

The surge in the last quarter along with a couple of bulk transactions increased Nepse’s annual turnover for this fiscal year by 54.12 per cent to Rs 10.27 billion while the annual turnover in the previous fiscal year was Rs 6.67 billion. The annual turnover had contracted last fiscal year due to the continuous slump.

The average daily turnover has also increased to Rs 44 million this year which stood at Rs 28.9 million last fiscal year. Market capitalisation stood at Rs 368.2 billion at the end of the current fiscal year which stood at Rs 323 billion last year. The market capitalisation of Nepse is equivalent to 23.64 per cent of gross domestic product.

Today, Janata Bank Nepal’s shares debuted in the stock market and was traded between Rs 116 and Rs 190. The 26th listed bank’s 641 unit shares worth Rs 88,645 were traded in its first day of trading. Nepse had determined its debut price between Rs 105 and Rs 316.

All of the subgroups except for development banks recorded gains in today’s trading. Hydropower companies went up by 19.89 points and Nepal Telecom gained Rs 13 per unit share pushing the others subgroup up by 15.27 points. Likewise, the banking subgroup gained 6.11 points, insurance and finance companies gained 2.78 points and 0.34 points, respectively.

Today, the secondary market saw 860,863 unit shares worth Rs 160 million traded in 789 transactions.

CDS to go online

KATHMANDU: CDS and Clearing (CDSC) will finally start operations from Monday –– the beginning of fiscal year 2012-13 –– as directed by the Finance Ministry. Nepal’s first central depository will be connected with its depository participants but dematerialisation of shares will take some time. It cannot be started in the absence of listed companies getting their shares registered at CDSC.