KATHMANDU, JUNE 11

As the government has eased its lockdown modality, the Securities Board of Nepal (SEBON) and Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) are now preparing to reopen the share market.

To stop the spread of the coronavirus, the government had imposed the lockdown from March 24 and extended it phase-wise till June 14.

Similarly, the secondary market has also been closed during the period except for a brief period when it opened on May 12 for a couple of days.

Bhisma Raj Dhungana, chairperson of SEBON, said discussions are being held with Nepse regarding the opening modality. “We are holding talks with representatives of Nepse, and investors, merchant bankers, brokers and other concerned stakeholders on how to reopen the secondary market,” he added.

“We will have further discussions regarding how to open the market with everyone concerned on Sunday and Monday.

After the discussions, the market will probably open from Tuesday or Wednesday,” informed Dhungana.

However, no instruction or request has been received from anywhere to open the market so far, he said.

Chandra Singh Saud, chief executive officer of Nepse, said they are all set to open the market.

“We are waiting for a direction from SEBON to open the market.” He added that there is no alternative other than to reopen the market from next week as the government has eased the lockdown modality.

Nepse had resumed trading on May 12 after a 50-day break, as per the direction of SEBON.

However, it remained open for only two days after the market tumbled noticeably.

At that time, SEBON had introduced new rules and trading had been limited to just two hours per day from 11:00am to 1:00pm.

Even so, the trading had been suspended before the closing bell on both days as the benchmark index plunged by the maximum daily limit of two per cent.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on June 12, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.