KATHMANDU: Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) has formed a probe panel to study the reason of fire in its building on Wednesday night.

The probe panel will be led by a representative of the Ministry of Finance and members will be from Securities Board of Nepal and Nepse. As per Murahari Parajuli, spokesperson for Nepse, the members of the team are yet to be finalised.

As the electric wiring in Nepse’s building was damaged in the fire, share trading was affected in the secondary market on Thursday. Nepse operated the secondary market between 12:55pm and 4:55pm on Thursday, while in normal times the market used to remain open between 11:00am to 3:00pm.

Officials informed that the preliminary investigation points towards short-circuit being the reason for fire breaking out at the country’s only secondary market that destroyed some furniture of the office.

Meanwhile, a total of 1.48 million shares of 153 companies were traded on Thursday through 4,402 transactions that amounted to Rs 453.14 million. The secondary market fell by 0.59 point or 0.04 per cent and closed at 1,520.15 points on Thursday.