Kathmandu, March 28:

The market seems to have reacted to the finance minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai’s assurance — that the government is committed to develop the capital market — as the sole secondary market, Nepse this week gained 8.71 points to close at 675.30 points from the Sunday’s opening of 666.59 points.

The 78-scrip sensitive index — considered the blue chip shares in the domestic market — also gained 1.92 points to 177.73 points from Sunday’s opening of 175.81 points. Similarly, the float index — calculated on the basis of real transactions — gained 0.51 point to 65.54 points from the Sunday’s opening of 65.03 points.

However, the total transaction amount for this week decreased by 4.92 per cent to Rs 279.46 million from last week’s transaction of Rs 293.93 million. The contribution of Group-A companies also slid to 69.19 per cent against last week’s 73.28 per cent.

The four-day session this week — due to public holiday on Thursday — started in green as on first day the Nepse surged by 19.91 points to 683.50 points from its opening of 666.50 points. Though, Monday witnessed a loss of 7.19 points to 676.31 points, Nepse tried to rebound on Tuesday as it gained 1.69 points to 678 points. But it closed at 675.30 points, shedding 2.70 points on Wednesday.

Of the nine-sub groups’ indices, the four sub-groups — commercial banks, others, hydropower companies and manufacturing — surged to push the Nepse up. But three sub-groups — development banks, finance companies and insurance companies — lost whereas two sub-groups — hotels and trading at 352.88 points and 213.82 points — remained unchanged. The other sub-group gained 17.62 points — the highest during the week — to 657.94 points, whereas manufacturing sub-group — traded in many weeks — gained 15.77 points to 419.87 points. The commercial banks group gained 13.35 points to 669.71 points and hydropower group gained 3.24 points to 891.10 points.

However, the development banks sub-group plunged by a whopping 39.05 points to 870.76 points and the finance companies sub-group shed 6.94 points to 772.18 points. Similarly, the insurance companies sub-group lost 4.55 points to 656.59 points.

This week’s top performers were Siddhartha Development Bank (with Rs 44.06 million), Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 32.44 million), Standard Chartered Bank (with Rs 31.68 million), Nepal Development and Employment Promotion Bank (with Rs 16.65 million) and NIC Bank (with Rs 11.72 million).

Over 50.40-million-unit of bonus shares of Everest Insurance, NMB Bank, NIC Bank and Himalayan Bank, and 6,00,000-unit of primary shares of Purbanchal Gramin Bikas Bank were listed this week.