Kathmandu, July 29 :

With a sudden fall in share prices of commercial banks, stock trading at Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) plunged heavily this week. Nepse index plummeted by 10.61 points, against last week’s gain of over nine points.

Trading at the country’s sole secondary market opened at 397.95 points on Sunday and closed at 387.34 points on Thursday, the last day of the trading under the regular lot.

The Nepse has been bullish for the last three weeks.

The sudden fall in stock prices of commercial banks, which is the largest scrip by volume at Nepse, comes following the announcement of Monetary Policy 2006-07 on Sunday.

The policy announced a provision to the existing national level commercial banks to increase their paid up capital gradually to one billion rupees by the end of July 2009. For this purpose, all commercial banks are appropriating some amount from their profit to capital adjustment fund.

According to Nepse, a total of 183,434 units of shares valued at Rs 102,481,899 were traded through 1,917 transactions over the week.

Last week, a total of 231,599 units of shares changed hands generating a turnover of Rs 76,724,103 from 1,137 transactions. Of the listed 70 companies for share trading, 61 companies saw their transactions this week.

The weekly trading report shows that commercial banks group suffered a heavy loss, as its index plummeted by 16.31 points. The group, which had gained over 14 points last week, opened at 454.69 points on Sunday and plunged to 438.38 points on Thursday.

Likewise, the other and development banks groups continued with negative growth trend for the last three weeks. The other group lost by seven points, while the development banks group suffered a loss of 3.88 points during the week.

The weekly trading of the other group opened at 409.65 points and closed down at 402.65 points, while the development banks group began at 294.10 points on Sunday and dropped to 290.22 points on the closing day.

On the other hand, the manufacturing group’s index rallied up to close at 303.64 points from the opening 302.13 points on Sunday. The insurance group gained 1.76 points during the five-day trading, as its index closed up at 387.84 points on Thursday.

The group, which had gained about two points last week, began its trading at 386.08 points on Sunday.

The finance group registered a marginal growth, as its index stood up at 263.31 points from the opening 261.77 points over the week.

The trading group and the hotel group, meanwhile, saw no change in their index and remained constant at 148.11 points and 180.77 points throughout the week.

The commercial banks group continued to dominate the Nepse floor by capturing a lion’s share of the total transactions. The group cornered 83.96 per cent share. The other group followed it and stood second with 9.04 per cent, while the finance group held 3.91 per cent of the total transaction.

The insurance group was able to capture 1.81 per cent and the manufacturing group had 0.64 per cent. The development banks group had a 0.54 per cent, while the trading group had a mere 0.09 per cent share.

In terms of maximum number of shares and transactions, Siddhartha Bank Ltd topped the race this week with 25,620 shares traded through 348 transactions.

But, Bank of Kathmandu outshone others to have the largest monetary value traded for the week, which stood at Rs 10,426,625.