Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, July 9:

With improvement in share prices of commercial banks and the other groups, stock trading at Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) continued on the growth path for the third straight week. The Nepse index registered an increment of 3.01 points over the week.

According to data released by the Nepse, the weekly share trading index opened at 281.28 points on Monday, and closed at 284.29 on Friday, the last day for share transactions under the regular lot. Share trading had recorded a growth of 0.33 point last week.

The commercial banks group continued on the growth track while the other group recovered after a series of fall. The finance group also followed it. The insurance and the development banks group were losers this week, while the manufacturing, the hotel, and the trading groups remained constant.

Total weekly transaction value also increased this week and stood at Rs 44,468,014 from 1,565 transactions of 179,216 share units. However, the last week’s total trading value was Rs 41,497,608 through 1,972 transactions of 123,344 shares. Of the listed 70 companies for share trading, 60 companies saw their transactions this week. The commercial banks group, the largest script by volume at the floor, carried on its growth track, as its index posted a growth of 4.11 points. The group, which had gained about one point last week, opened at 298.01 points and closed at 302.12 points on Friday.

The other group, which had remained constant last week, posted a growth of about 10 points. The Nepse index of the group closed at 345.15 points from an opening of 335.63 points. Likewise, the finance group’s index went up to close at 229.55 points from the opening 228.56 points on Monday.

However, the insurance and the development banks groups failed to continue last week’s growth trend. These groups’ indices settled at 308.45 points and 234.82 points from the opening of 311.20 points and 235.51 points, respectively. The trading group, the manufacturing group and the hotel group, however, remained constant at 122.94 points, 276.45 points and 178 points, respectively.

Of the eight groups, commercial banks’ group continued to dominate by volume of transactions. It captured 75.73 per cent of total market share. The finance group came in behind, accounting for 19.99 per cent share. The insurance group had 3.08 per cent, while the development banks group contributed 0.76 per cent.

The hotel group followed with a share of 0.30 per cent and the trading group cornered a mere 0.11 per cent, while the other group had a share of 0.03 per cent. Kumari Bank Ltd topped all companies in terms of number of transactions with 324 transactions this week. Nepal Bangladesh Bank Ltd came ahead in terms of the number of shares and monetary value traded for the week. A total of 48,420 shares of the bank were traded at Rs 12,495,620. The floor remained open for four working days.