Nepse halts trading of 81 listed companies

Kathmandu, October 20

Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) has halted share trading of 81 listed firms today as the concerned companies have not yet paid the annual securities renewal fees. As per law, the listed firms need to pay the yearly renewal fee to the stock exchange by October 17 every year for continuous trading of their secondary shares.

After this decision of Nepse, share traders today were unable to trade shares of the 81 affected firms. Service seekers have blamed the companies for not being responsible towards the investment made by general investors in their shares.

As per Nepse, share trading of those companies will be reopened only after they pay their renewal fees.

Of the 81 companies that have failed to pay the annual renewal fees, Nepse has said that a majority are microfinance companies with 19 such firms being blacklisted. Likewise, three companies from trading subgroup, two each from hotel and others sub-indices, 11 firms from manufacturing and processing sectors,  18 development banks, two firms from life insurance sub-index, 11 finance companies and 13 from hydropower subgroup have been affected.

Meanwhile, as per Nepse, all the banks had paid their yearly securities renewal fees before the said deadline.

As Nepse halted the share trading of the 81 firms, the secondary market’s trading volume and number of transactions took a dive today compared to previous days. The per day average transaction also went down.

As a result, Nepse index dipped by 4.03 points or 0.35 per cent today to close at 1,133.71 points. Likewise, sensitive index fell by 0.77 point or 0.31 per cent to 248.35 points and float index fell by 0.32 point or 0.4 per cent to rest at 79.67 points.