Kathmandu, March 2

The country’s sole secondary market witnessed a downward trend in the trading week between February 24 and 27 due to statements made by chair of the regulatory body on Permanent Account Number (PAN) provision and also due to banks and financial institutions still facing a liquidity crisis.

The government has decided to mandatorily apply the PAN provision for share transactions from April 15. In this context, Chairman of Securities Board of Nepal (SEBON) Rewat Bahadur Karki, has said the provision will be implemented as it has been included in the government’s programmes and policies for this fiscal.

Karki had also mentioned in a meeting of the Finance Committee under the Federal Parliament this week that the stockbrokers were the main reason for the country’s secondary market not being able to develop as expected, which has dampened investor sentiment.

“We strongly condemn the comments made by the SEBON chairperson, which have negatively impacted the index,” said Uttam Aryal, chairman of Investors Association of Nepal. Moreover, investors have also blamed the online trading system that has created a lot of hassles for investors for the share market not being able to rise as expected.

As a result, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index moved downward in the review week by 0.67 per cent or 7.55 points.

Similar to the Nepse index, the sensitive index also went down by 0.76 per cent or 1.81 points to 234.79 points and float index dipped by 0.70 per cent or 0.57 point to 80.32 points.

It has to be noted that the secondary market remained closed on Thursday as the government had announced a public holiday to mourn the death of late minister for culture, tourism and civil aviation Rabindra Adhikari, who passed away in a helicopter crash on Wednesday.

In the review period, weekly turnover decreased by 19.29 per cent as compared to the previous week to Rs 799.45 million. In the previous week the market witnessed turnover of Rs 990.56 million. However, the daily average turnover rose by Rs 199.86 million, which was an increase of 0.88 per cent in comparison to the previous week when it stood at Rs 198.11 million.

The secondary market had opened at 1,113.07 points on Sunday and went down by 10.75 points by the end of the first trading day. On Monday, it increased by 7.41 points. The local bourse, however, went down by 7.17 points the next day. However, the market went up by 2.97 points on Wednesday to close the week at 1,105.53 points.

In the review week, only manufacturing subgroup landed in green zone, rising by 1.27 per cent or 25.32 points to 2,015.54 points. It was due to the share price of Unilever Nepal going up by Rs 640 to Rs 19,500.

The trading sub-index, meanwhile, did not witness any transaction.

Meanwhile, the hotels subgroup led the pack of losers, decreasing by 2.17 per cent or 37.49 points to 1,684.03 points as the share price of Soaltee Hotel fell by four rupees to Rs 200.

The finance subgroup also shrunk by 1.19 per cent or 7.05 points to 584.84 points. Likewise, hydropower sub-index dipped by 0.76 per cent or 8.53 points to 1,109.3 points. Moreover, the banking sub-index descended by 0.69 per cent or 6.64 points to 946.63 points and development banks subgroup shed 0.67 per cent or 9.51 points to rest at 1,407.73 points.

Meanwhile, the non-life insurance subgroup also dropped by 0.46 per cent or 25.02 points to 5,317.12 points. Likewise, others sub-index declined by 0.44 per cent or 3.15 points to 703.05 points.

Moreover, the life insurance subgroup went down by 0.20 per cent or 11.69 points to 5,583.09 points and microfinance sub-index inched down by 0.11 per cent or 1.53 points to 1,372.78 points.

In the review week, Nabil Bank was the leader in terms of weekly turnover with Rs 47.52 million. It was followed by Nepal Bank with Rs 37.12 million, Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower with Rs 31.68 million, NMB Bank with Rs 29.96 million and NIC Asia Bank with Rs 26.70 million.

In terms of weekly trading volume, Upper Tamakoshi took the lead with 142,000 of its shares changing hands. Siddhartha Equity Oriented Scheme with 133,000 shares, Nepal Bank with 130,000 shares, NMB Bank with 98,000 shares and Laxmi Value Fund-1 with 93,000 shares were the other top firms to record high trading volume.

Meanwhile, Chautari Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha topped the chart in terms of number of transactions — 2,354. It was followed by Upper Tamakoshi with 1,958, Nabil Bank with 676, NIC Asia Bank with 415 and Agriculture Development Bank with 395 transactions.

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