Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, March 5:

The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index has shown a remarkable growth this week, showing a record 11.65 points increment. Good performance by commercial bank group coupled with manufacturing, trading, finance and insurance have contributed to the increase in the Nepse index. The Nepse index that started at 265.97 points at the beginning of the week reached 277.62 points by the closure of stock market on Friday. The Nepse index has shown a growth of 1.81 points last week. According to information released by the Nepal Stock Exchange Ltd, total weekly transaction value stood at Rs 880,42,268 this week from 3,565 transactions of 33,970 units throughout the week. Last week, the total trading value was pegged at Rs 72,088,661 through 2,523 transactions of 265,760 shares.

The Nepse index of the commercial bank group, which is the largest scrip on the Nepse floor, opened at 282.55 points on Monday and climbed up to 302.95 points by the weekend. The commercial group has gained nearly 20 points. Commercial banks have been showing good growth for the last few weeks. Financial groups have shown an increment of three points, but other groups lost 16 points at the closure of the share market. Categorised Nepse index shows that the commercial group moved from 282.55 points to 302.95 points, while manufacturing group and hotels stayed constant at 276.08 points and 173.21 points respectively. The trading group, which has shown an increment of 3.86 points last week decreased from 102.79 to 102.73. The finance group moved up from 208.58 points to 209.04 points and insurance group from 239.76 points to 242.78 points.

Like the last week, development banks could not show a good performance at the floor. The Nepse index of the development bank group stood at 112.66 points at the beginning of the week, which came down to 210.46 points, losing 2.2 points this week. The development bank group had lost 0.64 points last week. The commercial bank group continued to dominate the Nepse floor as it captured the largest chunk of total share trading. Commercial bank group captured 85.27 per cent of total share trading, followed by financial group at 12.55 per cent. The insurance group was in the third position with 0.89 per cent, followed by the development bank group at 0.43 per cent, manufacturing group at 0.06 per cent and other groups at 0.03 per cent.

Lumbini Bank Ltd topped the race as the single largest trader whose transaction value stood at Rs 168,75,740 this week from 1,492 transactions of 92,420 units of shares. The Nepse floor remained open for all five working days of the week, where the shares of Nabil Bank Ltd, Standard Chartered Bank, Himalayan Bank, Nepal SBI Bank, Nepal Bangladesh Bank, Everest Bank, Bank of Kathmandu, NIC Bank, Machhapuchre Bank, Laxmi Bank, Lumbini Bank and Kumari Bank were traded.